Not All Of It
by icbiwf
Summary: "Not all of it," she said. "Then how much?" he asked. What if she tried to explain? What if he gave her the chance to? What if Katniss was able to sort out her feelings at the end of The Hunger Games? How would events have unfolded if the Star-Crossed Lovers were real? Begins with the train scene at the end of HG, AU for CF and MJ.
1. Prologue: Only Love

_This is the beginning of a CF/MJ AU that I've been working on for the past year. I was waiting to post it until it was complete, because I don't want to be one of those people with ten different unfinished stories posted, but I submitted this opening chapter for Prompts in Panem's Visual Prompts week for the Canon Location prompt The Train. _

_If you want to know what motivated me to write this AU, then read the rest of this Author's Note. If you don't care, then skip straight to the story._

_I started devouring THG fic right after I finished reading MJ, mostly because I found MJ to be such an unsatisfying ending. I started with post-MJ fics, then moved on to in-Panem AUs, before really finding my jam with out-of-Panem AUs. I read a hundred different Everlark fics that featured Katniss finally admitting her feelings for Peeta, anywhere from pre-HG to post-MJ, but they all seemed to end there. Katniss and Peeta getting together seemed to be the end of the story, in every story I read, while the question in my mind, the question that had lead me to seek out HG fic in the first place, was What happens next? How would the rest of the story have happened, after they were together? How would them being together have changed the story? So I began writing._

_(Note: I'm not saying other such stories don't exist, nor even that they didn't at the time. I just hadn't found them yet.)_

_So that's what this story is. This isn't a story about Katniss falling in love with Peeta; for the purposes of this story, that already happened in the novel The Hunger Games. This isn't a story about Katniss and Peeta stumbling and fumbling their way towards a relationship; that happens by the end of this prologue. In this story, Katniss and Peeta will not be trying their hardest to sabotage their relationship. Katniss will not hide from her feelings. Peeta will not ignore her for six months. Neither one of them will use Gale as an excuse to avoid each other._

_This is a story about Katniss and Peeta, in a relationship. Katniss loves Peeta. Peeta loves Katniss. They are together. And together they face the Capitol, President Snow, President Coin, the Victory Tour, the Quarter Quell, the rebellion, the war, and all the other adversaries and obstacles of Catching Fire and Mockingjay._

_Fair warning: Catching Fire skips half a year between the 74__th__ Games and the Victory Tour, but I don't, because that's when the lovebirds have to figure out what it means to have a relationship back home and deal with the repercussions and fallout of their sudden bonding. So there's six months of Katniss and Peeta adjusting to life back in District 12 and adjusting to life as a couple before the plot of Catching Fire finally comes into this story. _

_Oh, and if you were wondering: I don't own The Hunger Games. I don't own the characters in this story, the situations they find themselves in, or the small quotes from the original books that I incorporated into this story. This story is meant purely for entertainment and amusement. _

_So now, let us join our pair of Star-Crossed Lovers, in the fair fuel depot where we lay our scene…_

_(I also don't own Romeo and Juliet. Just in case there was any confusion.)_

…..

"It was all for the Games," Peeta says. "How you acted."

"Not all of it," I say, tightly holding onto my flowers.

"Then how much? No, forget that. I guess the real question is, what's going to be left when we get home?" he says.

"I don't know. The closer we get to District Twelve, the more confused I get," I say. He waits, for further explanation. I don't feel ready to give one, so to deflect him I change the subject back to him. "So what about you, you're saying you never played anything up for the audience? You were being sincere the entire time?"

"Yes," he says, and the pain in his voice is palpable. "I thought we both were."

I'm usually reticent to explain myself, more comfortable letting a conversation wither and die rather than risk saying anything too revealing about myself. But somehow, after everything we've been through, everything I've shared with Peeta Mellark over the last month, in this moment something in me forces words out. "Peeta, I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to make of you. You were trying to be friendly, then you tried to push me away. We trained together, then you shut me out. You announced you loved me on television, but then in the arena you helped the Careers hunt me down. You saved my life, but I couldn't even tell if that really happened or if it was a tracker jacker hallucination. And the entire time I knew that it didn't really matter if we did care about each other, because for one of us to go home we'd have to kill the other."

"Katniss," he says, "I would never have killed you. I love you. For real, not because of any strategy or scheme or Game. From the moment my name was called, my only goal was to keep you alive."

The sincerity in Peeta's voice takes me aback. When I reply, my voice is small. "I know that now. But even if you had tried to tell me that before the Games, I doubt I would have believed you. I would have thought it was all part of your strategy to win."

"Is that what you were doing?" he asks sadly. "Were you trying to set me up so I'd be easier to kill?"

"No," I answer, "I was trying to set _me_ up so you'd be easier to kill." I start to blush from the embarrassment of this admission, but I see only confusion in Peeta's eyes so I push on. "You never knew what you meant to me. The boy with the bread. That day in the rain behind the bakery, that was everything to me. When my father was gone, and my mother failed me, and the whole world seemed to turn its back on me, you were the only one who helped me. You were my one ray of hope in a world of darkness. You were my dandelion in the spring, my one sign that things could be good again. You saved my life, you saved my whole family's lives. And as soon as you were reaped I knew that the only way I could ever see them again was to kill you." My breath catches in my throat, and I feel like I may cry. I blink away tears as the words start to tumble out of my mouth seemingly on their own. "It only got worse when we were on the train and I started to get to know you as a real person and not just a spectre out of my past. But the whole time all I could think was that in a week one of us was going to have to kill the other! I didn't know what to do or what to think, I didn't know if you were being sincere or you were trying to manipulate me, I was so confused I didn't know what was real and what wasn't."

Peeta seems to consider this for a long moment. "And what about now?" he says.

"Now, I don't know," I say. "So much has happened so quickly, and I haven't let myself stop to think about any of it, because the only thought I allowed myself was how to keep us alive. Now that we're safely out of the Capitol I'm trying to process everything, trying to make some sense of it."

I don't know exactly what response I expect from Peeta, but I know I don't get it. Instead he merely stares at me for a moment, then says, "Well, let me know when you work it out," and turns to leave.

For a moment, I watch him go. My new ear listening to every footfall of his new leg. Somehow I know that if I let him walk away now I'll lose him forever, and I surprise myself again by admitting that I don't want that to happen. "Peeta!" I call after him. "Peeta, wait!" But he doesn't slow. I run after him trying to catch him before he makes it back on the train and he's able to put a locked door between us. "Peeta, stop!" I call out, and now I can feel the tears I tried to hold back starting to flow.

When I catch up to Peeta, I grab him over the shoulder and yank him around, shoving him up against the side of the train. His eyes are wide with shock, I can tell his mind is still in survival mode from the Games, but then his whole face softens as he sees the tears on my face. I speak quickly before he gets a chance because I'm afraid of what he might say right now. "Don't walk away from me, Peeta! You can't spend ten years pining away for me and then walk away in a huff because I need more than a few hours without the threat of imminent death to figure out how I feel! Not after everything we've been through together. Don't you dare do that to me!"

"What do you want me to do, Katniss?" he yells back, and now he's starting to cry too. "You've told me so many different things I don't know which way is up anymore! And when I ask you about it you tell me that you don't know either. So what would you have me do?"

"Help me!" I exclaim. "Help me figure out what was real and what wasn't. Help me figure out what's up and what's down. Help me figure out what we are to each other."

"Here's a start: Everything I said was one hundred percent real," he says, starting to sound angry.

I roll my eyes. "Oh, really? How about when you helped the Careers hunt me down, when you told them to strand me up a tree until I starved and kill me when I tried to come down for food? That was real? One hundred percent real?"

He seems genuinely angry now. "I was trying to protect you!"

"So now it's okay when you lie to protect me but it's not okay when I lie to protect you?" Peeta looks confused at this, and I can't believe he still doesn't get it. Didn't he see the sponsor gifts we got? Where did he think those came from? Did he think everyone was as kindhearted and honest as he was? Hadn't he ever met his mother? "Do you think we would have gotten any food if I hadn't pretended to love you? Do you think a heartfelt and genuine 'I don't know how I feel, this is all happening so fast,' would have gotten us the medicine for your leg? Do you think there's any chance in hell they would have let us both live if I hadn't acted the way I did?" I can tell from the look on Peeta's face that no, in fact, he hadn't thought about any of that before. "I kept us alive with my kisses just as much as I did with my bow, so don't stand here with your full belly and your healthy blood and your beating heart and try to tell me I did anything wrong!"

Peeta just looks at me for a moment. I spent the whole Games marveling at his skill with words, and now I've rendered him speechless. Finally he looks away and mumbles something so quietly that I have to ask him to repeat it.

"Eleven years," he says, sighing loudly, "not ten. It was eleven years I spent pining away for you, too chicken to actually introduce myself."

"Eleven years is a long time to wait to just give up and walk away," I say.

Peeta looks at me for a long time. "I suppose so," he finally says.

Before either of us says anything else, the train whistle interrupts us. "We should get back on the train," Peeta says, but he makes no move to do so.

"Together," I say, extending my free hand towards him. It's a request, but not a question.

Peeta stares at me for a long moment, but finally takes my hand. "Together."

…..

It's late. Peeta and I are alone in the lounge car as the darkness slips by outside. Haymitch and Effie have gone to bed for the night. It was awkward on the train after our fuel stop, everyone knew there was a new tension between Peeta and me but thankfully nobody tried to bring it up. The only comment made was from Haymitch, on his way to his room for the night clutching a bottle in each hand, calling over his shoulder, "Remember you two, you've got a show to put on tomorrow."

Peeta and I share a couch, sipping hot chocolate. My onion flowers are in a crystal vase to the side. We're having a long conversation about our feelings, and I'm surprising myself by participating in a long conversation about my feelings.

"I spent so much time at the Training Center, really starting as soon as your name was called at the reaping, trying to convince myself that I could to kill you. Because I knew it was the only way I could come home. And it was really hard for me, because I didn't want to kill you. Not because I'm any kind of a good person or because I'm above killing, I killed people in the arena and I'd do it again if it meant going back home to Prim. But I didn't think I could kill _you_. Because of the bread."

"In a weird way, I was relieved when I was reaped. As soon as you volunteered to be the tribute, I thought about volunteering so I could be there to help you. But if I couldn't even screw up the courage to talk to you, how could I volunteer for the Games? And what business did I have? What made me think I would even be capable of helping you in any way, or that you would accept my help? And while all of these conflicting thoughts were battling it out in my head, my name was called and the decision was made for me."

"At first, it wasn't real, for me. A kiss for the sponsors so they would send us some food, a kiss for the Gamemakers so they had a good enough show to leave us alone until you healed. It was all part of the game. But then, suddenly, it wasn't. That kiss, in the cave, after I came back from the feast. The one that you stopped because you thought I was bleeding too heavily? I felt that kiss, in a way that I hadn't with any of the others. That was a real kiss. The full-blown panic I flew into when we were separated in the woods and you didn't answer my calls, that was real. Deciding I'd rather kill myself than come home without you, that was real. The hysterical fit I had when they separated us on the hovercraft, that was real. And it scares me to death to feel that much. It scares me to care that much about another person."

"I think I knew, deep down. I know enough about you that I should have known. You're not the type of person who declares their undying love for someone they barely know. I could tell you were forcing yourself to act, I could tell how reluctant and how uncomfortable you were, but I just told myself it was because of the Games, or because of the audience, or because you were new to the whole romance thing. I mean, when you found me by the river I as much as told you to act like we were in love, and then when you did I fell for the act anyway. I didn't want to admit the obvious, because I thought I finally had what I'd always dreamed about having: You."

"After my father died, my mother just turned off. She couldn't handle the pain, so she just tuned out the world for a while. She would spend all day, every day, just staring off into space, oblivious to anything happening around her. Oblivious to her children starving. I hated her for that, I still hate her for that, because we needed her. Prim and I needed her. She was all we had left, and she abandoned us. That's what love is to me. Vulnerability. Weakness. My mother loved my father so much that she let her children starve. After that I told myself I would never let myself fall in love, because I didn't want to end up like my mother. I never wanted to care about someone so much that losing them would have that effect on me. And then I found myself in the arena, deciding that I'd rather kill myself than have to watch you die."

"I hate to say it, because I hate the Games and I hate the Capitol. But the happiest I've ever been in my life was during those interviews, when I thought you really loved me, when you were by my side with my arm wrapped around you and we were going home together."

"I hate to admit it, because of everything I've been through in my life: I lost my father, I almost starved to death, I've had to fend for myself and my family since I was eleven, I fought for my life in the arena. But this might be the most scared I've ever been in my life. I think I really am falling in love with you, and it terrifies me."

Finally we seem to have talked ourselves out. I have no idea how late it is now, it feels like we've been talking for hours. I find myself staring into Peeta's eyes for an endless moment, losing myself in them. He's staring back at me, what does he see in my eyes? Does he lose himself in my eyes like I'm losing myself in his? Is that love?

Eventually Peeta breaks the silence. "What about Gale?" he asks softly.

I want to dismiss the question out of hand, but we've been too honest with each other tonight, so I force myself to really think. What about Gale? How do I feel about Gale? Do I love him? In a way I do, he's like a brother to me, but do I love him the way I'm afraid I might love Peeta? Do I even know enough about love to answer the question?

"Gale," I begin, "is my best friend. He's practically my brother. Since my father died, he's the one person in the world I've been able to trust, truly trust. I'm closer to Prim, but I can't really confide in her sometimes because I'm trying to protect her. Gale has been my only companion, my only confidante." I pause, and take Peeta's hand. "But I've never had a conversation like this with him. I couldn't imagine trusting him with some of the things we've said tonight. Before tonight I couldn't imagine myself ever trusting anyone enough to even have a conversation like this." I pause and lose myself in Peeta's eyes for another moment. He doesn't say anything, so I continue. "I started off in the Games, pretending to love you. And then at some point, without even realizing it, I wasn't pretending anymore. Then in the interviews I had to pretend again, because even if I did have genuine feelings for you they wouldn't be enough for the cameras. And then thinking about going home, and thinking about my family, and yes thinking about Gale, all of my old fears came back and I managed to convince myself that it was all pretend after all, that I was just confused and I was so wrapped up in the Games that I didn't know what I was thinking. But now, sitting here tonight, talking with you, talking for real - with no cameras, no audience, no threat of imminent death - I can't deny how I feel, no matter how much it scares me."

"So what are you saying?" Peeta asks gently.

"Peeta, I don't know if I love you the way that you love me. I don't know if I would even be able to recognize it if I did. But I know that I completely lost it the few times I thought I might lose you. I know there isn't another human being alive I would be able to have this conversation with, there's no one else I trust enough or feel comfortable enough with to discuss myself in this much depth. I know that I felt safer in that cave with you than I have any night I've spent alone in luxurious Capitol beds since. I know that when I look into your eyes, I lose all sense of my surroundings and all I want to do is keep staring. I know that sometimes, when I kiss you, when I'm not consumed by terror and I'm not trying too hard to put on a show, sometimes I just lose myself in the kiss and my whole body flutters and I never want it to end. I know I'd be miserable without you in my life, and it terrifies me to be that dependant on another person, but I know that the only way I can face that fear is with you there to give me strength."

Peeta smiles at me. "I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what you're describing sounds an awful lot like love."

This really is the oddest conversation I've ever had, because instead of clamping my mouth shut and retreating behind a wall of embarrassment, I return the smile. "Well then, I guess maybe I love you."

Peeta suddenly bursts out laughing. I compare this to his reactions this afternoon at the fuel depot, and decide that I'm not the only one who seems to have been changed by this conversation we're having. "You know, I've spent a lot of years dreaming of a day when you'd say something like that to me. It's hardly the most conventional declaration of love, but it may be the most beautiful thing I've ever heard."

I can feel my face redden, but my smile only deepens. "You should know by now, I'm hardly the most conventional girl."

"Hardly. But you are definitely the most beautiful," he says, and leans in to kiss me.

The moment our lips meet, I can tell this isn't like any other kiss we've shared before. This isn't hesitant, or fleeting, or desperate. It's not the least bit uncomfortable. We're not sick, or injured, or starving, or dying. There are no cameras filming us, no audience watching us, no Gamemakers or sponsors or president judging us. This kiss is only for each other, and neither of us is pretending, not one bit. Peeta's lips are warm, and soft, forceful yet giving, and somehow still taste like fresh dough even though I know it's been at least a month since he's been near any. I can feel my body react as our lips part and our tongues meet, there's a hunger in me that's both stronger than ever before and yet not as overpowering, perhaps because I'm finally willing to admit that it's there, finally willing to see a day in our future when I might satisfy it. This is a kiss between two lovers, this is a kiss meant to express love, and it breaks down all remnants of resistance in me. I can no longer deny how I feel. I can no longer deny my love for Peeta. And after, when we're leaning our foreheads against each other and panting for air, when I recover enough breath to look straight into Peeta's impossibly blue eyes and tell him, "I love you," it's completely real. There's no more pretending, no more hesitation, no more fear. Only love.

…..

_That's it, Katniss and Peeta are officially together. For the rest of this story, they will face their trials and travails as a united front. _

_Next chapter: What happens when they get back to District 12? _

_Preview quote from Chapter 2:_

"_Because I didn't want you to come home with him. I wanted you to come home to me."_


	2. Coming Home

The first few weeks after the Games is a whirlwind of official events we have to attend – parties, banquets, ceremonies, celebrations, it doesn't stop. For almost a month Peeta and I are on camera every day. The only highlight is the first Parcel Day, when the residents of Twelve receive the extra food rations that go to the winning district. It's the most food anyone in the Seam has had since Haymitch won his Games.

Ironically enough, because Peeta and I have to spend so much time pretending to be in love, we don't have any time during that month to actually be in love. We barely see each other when we we're not putting on a show for the cameras. Every day it's the same thing: Prep teams, official events, more prep teams, some kind of ball or banquet or dinner, then we return to our separate homes in the Victor's Village.

The whirlwind schedule may have forced this separation anyway, but part of me blames my mother. She told one of the Capitol interviewers at the train station that she thought I was too young for a boyfriend. Apparently she suddenly decided to try to act like a mother again, but forgot that I'm not eleven anymore. The Capitol people, not realizing that she stopped being my mother five years ago when she abandoned Prim and me, took her opinion as law. So while Haymitch spends each day pushing me to drape myself all over Peeta to sell the love story, at night Effie seems even more bound and determined to enforce what she sees as "proper behavior" now that she has my mother's prohibition backing her up. It makes me want to stab Effie with one of her ridiculously high heels, and makes me even more resistant to my mother's misguided attempts at parenting me.

One night, Peeta and I sneak out together, just for an hour or so, just so we can spend some time together. When we return, we find that Effie has woken half the district to organize search parties and has already called for backup from the Capitol. It's enough to convince us to just wait out the rest of the month. My mother doesn't want to let me leave the house at all after that, and since I can't go hunting or go to the Hob with all of the Capitol people here and I can't go see Peeta with Effie hovering about, I don't even fight her on it.

The whole mess points toward one of the many unanswered questions in our relationship. Mom says I'm too young for a boyfriend; is that what Peeta is, my boyfriend? Somehow that label doesn't feel right, but since I have zero experience with boyfriends and have only been in love with Peeta off-camera for a total of a few hours, I have no way to answer the question. Right now all we are is props by day, estranged neighbors by night.

The separation does serve to reinforce to me how much I really do love Peeta. Sometimes I don't realize how important something is to me until it's taken away, and this turns out to be the case with Peeta. All I want to do is spend time with him alone, just the two of us, and I spend the month counting down the days until Effie and the cameras go back to the Capitol and Peeta and I can be together for real, with only my easily-ignored mother in our way. I still have no idea what that will mean, we haven't even had a chance to discuss it. The only time we get to talk is every so often when we're left to wait together while some event is set up or while some official introduces us, but these moments only last a few minutes and even then we're surrounded by other officials so we can't really talk freely.

As the month wears on, I can feel myself slowly shutting down. I never get a full night's sleep anymore because of nightmares about the Games. I completely lose my appetite, if it wasn't for all of the banquets and dinners we have to attend I wouldn't eat. When I'm home I just feel listless. As much as I hate the filmed events we have to attend, the only time I really feel alive is when I'm with Peeta. Even when most of our time is spent pretending to be Capitol Katniss and Capitol Peeta, there are moments when it's just us. A quick look before stepping out on stage, the spark I feel when we grasp hands, a few seconds while we kiss when the entire world falls away. In these moments we're just Katniss and Peeta, if only for a moment. If it weren't for these moments, I think I would completely break down. I think back to how my mother reacted after my father died, and I find myself becoming more and more sympathetic to her circumstance. The thought disturbs me, especially when I partly blame her for this separation and the effect it's having on me.

Finally, on the day the camera crews go home, on our first day with no big dinner event we have to attend, we decide to have a private dinner for our families. None of us has had much chance to see each other off-camera. Mom invites my newfound cousins the Hawthornes and I invite the Mellarks and Haymitch, who is surprisingly sober for the occasion. The only one missing is Peeta's mother. She was also conspicuously absent from the Victory events. I know her reaction to our relationship bothers Peeta, but he seems more resigned to it than genuinely hurt.

Dinner goes exceedingly well. Other than the first moments I saw my family at the train station, this is easily my favorite night since the Games. Peeta and I revel in not having to put on a show. His father is quiet as always, but seems to be genuinely enjoying himself. His brothers Rye and Barlee seem to be having fun, plenty of it at our expense. It's the first time since we got back that I've seen the Hawthornes relaxed and not trying to fit in at a Capitolized event. We all wear our normal clothes and not Capitol dress shipped in for the occasion; as much as I love Cinna's designs it's nice to feel normal again. Best of all no one talks much about the Games. Everyone seems to be having a good time other than Gale, who is unusually quiet. I wonder if he's uncomfortable around the Mellarks; Gale often has unkind things to say about merchant families, but he's been trading game at the bakery for years so I'd thought he'd be more comfortable with them than he seems to be. A few of us try to bring him into the conversation but he only gives us short responses.

As my mother and Hazelle are handing out second helpings of stew, the discussion turns to our talents. Every Victor is supposed to develop a talent, a hobby to devote time to since they don't have to work anymore.

"I think I'll try art," Peeta says. "I've spent years icing cakes and I aced the camouflage station. How different could smearing paint on a canvas be?"

"Oh, your cakes are always beautiful!" Prim gushes. She and Peeta took an instant liking to each other before we even left the train station. "I'm sure your paintings will be great! What will your talent be, Katniss?"

I think for a moment as I chew my food. "I don't know. Is hunting a talent?"

"No," grumbles Haymitch. "Hunting is a crime."

"Target shooting?" I offer. Haymitch just gives me a look. "Everybody saw me with a bow in the arena. Wouldn't it appeal to the Capitol audience if my official talent was something they saw me do in the Games?"

"There's only one Capitol audience you need to appeal to," Haymitch warns. "Don't give him an excuse to come down hard on you."

"What was your talent, Haymitch?" Peeta asks.

"Drinking," he grumbles again.

"You should sing, Katniss," suggests Peeta's father. "You have a beautiful singing voice."

I'm a bit taken aback by his comment. "Mr. Mellark, when have you heard me sing?"

Mr. Mellark opens his mouth to respond, but before he can Peeta gently takes my hand and quietly says, "Rue." I try to reply but I only manage to croak a bit. I close my eyes and take several deep breaths to compose myself. Peeta gives me a quick kiss on the temple and tells me it's all right, that I'm safe now. He's the only one who can tell me that and I believe them. I open my eyes and turn to kiss him again before turning back toward everyone else. "Sorry," I stammer out, "Sometimes I forget that everyone saw all of that."

"I'm sorry I mentioned it," Mr. Mellark says to me.

"No, it's not your fault," I tell him. "It's just that Rue's death really gets to me sometimes." I take a drink of water, and decide to try to return to the topic. "But I don't want to sing for my talent. It's too personal for me. I sang with my father, and ever since he died I only sing occasionally. Only for people I love. Not for the entertainment of the Capitol."

"You gotta do something, Sweetheart," Haymitch says. "How about cooking? I could use someone to make meals for me."

My mother is giving Haymitch a dirty look because she thinks he's being insensitive to my emotional breakdown, but I recognize his strategy. My anger at him just hauled me out of the abyss of despair I was falling into and back to reality. Still, I scowl at him, because that's how we are.

"You like spending time in the meadow. How about… flower arranging?" Prim suggests, though even she can't keep a straight face at the suggestion.

"You could play the flute," suggests Rye with a wicked smirk.

"Try art with me," Peeta suggests.

"Oh, no!" I say. "I have no artistic ability whatsoever. I don't want to ruin your talent just because I have nothing to do."

"Come on, it'll be fun," Peeta says, reaching out to palm the side of my head and rubbing my cheek with his thumb, and it's everything I can do to keep my eyes open and not moan audibly. If anybody had tried to tell me a month and a half ago that I would be reacting to someone's touch this way, I probably would have tried to shoot them. "We can do it together," he adds softly, looking deep into my eyes. "This is supposed to be the thing we spend our time on now. Let's do it together."

"Okay," I find myself saying as a huge grin splits my face. After the past month, the thought of doing anything together with Peeta is too appealing to pass up. "I'd like that."

"If worst comes to worst," Peeta says with a mischievous grin, "We'll just display all of my work and say we collaborated."

I laugh with everyone else. "I might smack you for saying that, if I didn't think it would actually come to that!" I say as everyone laughs again.

That's when I notice, everyone is laughing but Gale. He's alternating his stare between his plate and me before he abruptly stands, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. "I'm, uh, just going to get some air," he says, and walks quickly out the back door.

Nobody says anything, merely looking at each other silently. Finally I stand. "I'll go get him." Peeta starts to stand with me, but I put my hand on his shoulder. "Just, give us a few minutes?" I ask. He nods, takes my hand from his shoulder and kisses it. I give his hand a reassuring squeeze before I let go and go looking for Gale.

I find him towards the back of the yard, facing the woods behind the Victor's Village. I walk out towards him but he doesn't acknowledge me. Finally I call out his name.

He flinches when I speak, and spins around to face me. The anger on his face surprises me. "What's going on between you and Mellark?" he demands. "Is this all for real?"

I answer as honestly as I can. "It didn't start out that way, but yes, it's for real."

Gale just glares at me. "Somehow I find that real hard to believe. The last time we talked you were insisting to me how you were never going to have a relationship and never get married. How do you go from that to happily ever after in a few weeks?"

I don't want to get into an argument with Gale, but the accusation in his tone is irritating me. "In case you hadn't noticed, I just went through the single most transformative experience in my life. Nothing in my life is the same after going through the Games."

"Catnip, don't let them change you. You went, you came home, you can just put all of that behind you now."

I shake my head. "No, Gale, you don't understand. I'll never be able to put it behind me."

"What don't I understand? Explain it to me."

"There's nothing to explain, Gale. Nobody who hasn't been in the Games can possibly understand them." How could I explain to Gale the terrors I experienced in the arena? The terrors I continue to experience in my dreams? The constant threat Peeta and

I now live under? I can't. Gale looks like he wants to argue this point, so I continue before he can speak. "You want to know the two biggest misconceptions that you're operating under? One, that the winners of the Games are the lucky ones. That the winners are even winners. And two, that the Games end when you leave the arena."

Gale's face twists in anger and frustration. "So what are you saying? That the Capitol is forcing you into a relationship with Mellark?"

"No! Well, they would be if I wasn't already in one." Wait, what the hell am I saying? How is that explanation going to cut through Gale's anger when it didn't even make sense in my head?

Sure enough… "What does that even mean! You're dating him to stop the Capitol from forcing you to date him?"

I just shake my head. We're arguing in circles, and I'm not even sure why we're arguing. "Gale, why does my relationship with Peeta bother you so much? I just survived the Hunger Games. Why can't my best friend just be happy for me? Where is all of this anger coming from?"

Gale takes a step towards me. If this were two months ago and we were in the woods stalking prey I wouldn't give his proximity a second thought, but standing here, now, talking about Peeta, suddenly Gale feels uncomfortably close. When he speaks the anger has left his voice. "Because I didn't want you to come home with _him_. I wanted you to come home to me."

It takes me a moment to realize exactly what Gale is implying, and in that time he closes the distance between us, grabs me by the shoulders, and he kisses me.

I'm so completely taken by surprise that I don't respond at all for a moment. Gale's lips are on mine, and it feels… nothing at all like when Peeta and I kiss. Gale's kiss is demanding, where Peeta's are inviting. Peeta's kisses ignite a fire inside me; right now all I feel is a cold dread in the pit of my stomach.

It isn't until I feel his tongue probing my lips that my brain catches up to the world and I realize _Gale is kissing me_. I suddenly remember I can move and I shove him off of me with all the strength I can muster. He stumbles back several steps, looking at me in shock.

Now it's my turn to be angry. "What the hell, Gale? Where did that come from? What made you think you could do that? Just grab me and…" I can't even finish the sentence, I don't want to say what just happened. I settle for, "Don't ever do that to me again!"

"Come on, Catnip! You don't belong with some soft merchant. Someone who's never had to struggle. Never missed a meal. We belong together, you and me!"

At this point I'm completely fed up with Gale, and I don't try to hide it. "What is it, something in the water? Are you telling me that you're just like Peeta was, having feelings for me but too chicken to say anything? We spent every day together! Practically everyone thought we were already dating anyway! If you really felt that way about me, why didn't you say something before I fell in love with someone else?"

Gale opens his mouth to respond before choking off whatever he was about to say and closing it again. I'm not sure what I said that has affected him until he finally speaks, the anger gone from his voice. "You really love him?"

My heart breaks a little to hear the pain and disappointment in Gale's voice, because I don't want to hurt my best friend this way. But he needs to hear the truth. "Yes, I really do love him."

He looks away from me then, staring off into the woods again. "You always said you were never going to be in a relationship, you were never going to get married. I thought, I had time. I thought there was no reason to rush anything, there was no reason to push you. I thought we were best friends, we'd always be together, and someday when you started to rethink love and marriage and children, I'd be there waiting for you."

Gale's revelation leaves me completely bewildered. I've known him since I was twelve. "We're friends, Gale."

"Yeah, we're friends," he says, staring at his feet, sounding sadder than I've ever heard him. "We were friends and that was great, until it wasn't. I don't remember exactly when I started feeling differently. But I remember one day in the Hob, right after New Year's. We were eating some slop of Greasy Sae's, not up to her usual standards but it was the middle of winter and game was scarce. Darius was playing with your braid, teasing you about trading a rabbit for one of his kisses. And I realized… I minded." He looks up at me briefly before returning his gaze to the ground. "I didn't want him playing with your hair. I didn't want him kissing you. I wanted that to be me."

I want to reach out to him, to comfort him, but after the kiss I don't think physical contact is a good idea. Instead I just say, "I'm sorry, Gale. I never meant to hurt you. You're my best friend, you're like my brother. But that's all you are to me."

"And that's all I'll ever be?" he asks dejectedly. I take the question as rhetorical and simply wait for Gale to continue. "What made you change your mind?" he asks me after a moment. "The last time we talked, on Reaping Day, you were so dead set against this. For years you wouldn't even consider the idea. What changed?"

"I fell in love," I tell him, because I don't have any better answer. Gale just looks confused and frustrated. "I never decided that I wanted to love someone. I just suddenly found that I did."

"Just answer me this," he says, finally looking back at me. "If there was no Peeta, if you came home from the Games by yourself, could we have been together?"

"I don't know. I changed so much in the Games, not just because of Peeta. Being in the Games changes everything about a person. I don't know." I pause for a moment. "Maybe if Prim had never been reaped, if I had never been in the Games, if we had just gone on with our lives and nothing changed, then we might have ended up together. I don't know. But I don't think I would have ever felt about you the way I feel about Peeta. I've never felt for anyone the way I feel for Peeta."

"You really care about him that much?"

"Gale, do you know what we did on our last night before coming home?" I can tell immediately from the way Gale's face darkens what he thinks we did that night. "No, not that! We were on the train, our first real day outside of the Capitol, and we spent the night sitting up alone in the lounge car, having a long conversation about my feelings."

Gale is a bit stunned to hear this. "You? Had a long conversation? About your _feelings_?"

"Yes. I was trying to sort out how I really felt from how I had acted just for the Games, so we sat down together and spent the night talking about it. We talked about how I felt about Peeta. How I felt about you. How Peeta felt about me. How I felt about my father, about his death, about my mother's reaction. How I felt about love, about marriage, about children. And we went through everything that happened in the arena and explained to each other exactly what we were each really thinking and feeling at each step along the way, what was real and what was a play for the Games, and how we each felt about the other's actions and feelings. We were up almost till sunrise talking about how we felt about each other, and that was when I finally had to admit to myself that I really do love Peeta."

Gale just stares at me. It takes him almost a full minute to formulate a response. That one conversation with Peeta might have been longer than every conversation Gale and I have ever had, and it communicated things I would never even consider sharing with Gale. And we both know it.

Finally, he asks me, "Does he make you happy, Catnip?"

I don't even need to think before answering. "More than I ever thought I could be."

His shoulders slump, and he throws out a dejected, "Well, I can't compete with that." Then he turns and starts walking around to the front of the house.

"Gale!" I call after him. "Gale, I'm not trying to chase you away. Come back inside and finish dinner."

He stops, but he doesn't turn around. "I'm sorry, but I just need some time. I need some time to think, some time to adjust. I've spent so much time thinking about our future together-" Gale cuts himself off, unable to continue for a moment. "I don't hate you," he finally says. "If you're as happy with him as you say you are then I'm honestly happy for you. But I just can't do this tonight."

"Gale-"

"Good night, Catnip." With that he disappears around the corner of the house, headed around front towards the road back to town.

I don't chase after him, I don't see the point. But I don't feel ready to go back inside and face everyone yet either, so I head back over to the porch and just sit there for a while.

I try to wrap my mind around everything that just happened. Gale has feelings for me. Gale thinks my relationship with Peeta is fake. Gale wants me to dump Peeta for him. Gale kissed me.

Gale _kissed_ me. Gale kissed me and- well, I didn't let him, exactly, but I didn't stop him either. Not until-

How long did I stand there like a statue and let him kiss me? Seconds? Minutes? Surely not minutes?

What will Peeta say when he finds out? I briefly consider trying to hide this from him, but immediately reject the idea. We just spent a month acting for the cameras. And after seeing the hurt on his face at that fuel depot, I don't ever want to lie to Peeta again.

But what will he think when he finds out about this? Will he blame me? I didn't mean to kiss Gale, but I let it happen. Sort of. Could I have done more to prevent it? Could I have fought him off sooner? Should I have seen it coming? Everyone in Twelve - including Peeta! - assumed there was already something romantic going on between Gale and me, after all.

Would this constitute cheating? Have I cheated on Peeta? It's not like Gale and I slept together, but kissing another man is still considered cheating, right? Then again, were Peeta and I even together to be cheated on? We hadn't even had the chance to discuss it yet!

My mind continues to churn on its own as I sit on the porch and stare into the woods for I don't know how long. I don't notice time passing. I don't even notice Peeta coming outside until he sits down beside me and takes my hand in his. "You okay?" he asks.

I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. I know what I have to tell him, but I can't bring myself to do so yet. "I think I just lost my best friend," I say instead.

"Because of me?" Peeta asks, as if he already knows the answer.

"Because of us. Partly. And partly because of the Games."

"How so?"

I want to look at Peeta, to hold onto him and curl myself into his body the way I did those nights in the cave. But I think if I look at him I'll lose whatever nerve I have to speak, so I continue to stare out into the woods. "Gale and I became close because we had so much in common. We could easily relate to each other. We both lost our fathers. We both hunted to support our families. We both took care of our younger siblings. But now I feel like we've lost that closeness, because no matter what happens he'll never understand what it was like in the Games."

Peeta is silent for a moment. "So you're saying I'm not competing with Gale, I'm competing with Haymitch?"

This gets a real laugh out of me, but I stop short when I realize I have to tell him. "Peeta, Gale kissed me."

I can feel Peeta's hand tense for a moment, but he doesn't say anything, so I continue. "Turns out he had… feelings for me after all. He was trying to convince me to be with him and not with you, and I was trying to let him down easy. He thought I was letting the Capitol force us together, and I was trying to explain that he had it all wrong, when he just grabbed me and kissed me."

"What did you do?" Peeta asks carefully.

"I didn't do anything at first. I was just kind of stunned. Then when I got my wits together and realized he was still kissing me I shoved him away from me and told him not to do it again."

"And that's it?" he asks cautiously.

I shrug. "We talked for a little while longer and then he left."

"If that's all it was, why are you telling me this like it's your deepest, darkest confession?"

I let out a deep breath. "Because I love you and I let another man kiss me. Because you thought there was something between me and Gale and I told you there wasn't and apparently I was wrong about that. Because I lied to you in the arena and I just spent a month pretending in front of the cameras and I never want to lie to you about anything again. Because I love you and I trust you and I always want to tell you everything."

Peeta doesn't say anything just then. He lets go of my hand and pulls away, giving me just an instant to panic that he's about to leave me before I feel his arm wrap around my waist. Peeta pulls me tightly to his side and buries a kiss in my hair; I sigh in relief and contentment and lay my head down on his shoulder. "I love you, Katniss," he whispers into my hair. "That's not going to change because of anything Gale does."

His words fill me with warmth even as the feel of his soft breath sends shivers down my spine. I choke out a sound that might be a laugh and might be a sob. "I know I'm new to this whole relationship thing, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not supposed to be kissing other guys."

"Well, did you kiss him or did he kiss you?" he asks me, but his voice is sweet and tender, with none of the tension or caution it contained earlier. His voice sets me at ease enough that I can answer his question.

"He kissed me."

"And when he did, did you kiss him back? Or did you go slack with shock that such a ridiculous thing was happening?"

I can't help but smile at Peeta's characterization of my reaction. "The latter," I tell him.

I can hear the smile in Peeta's voice as he continues his questioning. "And then, did you tell him, 'Oh Gale, your sweet lips feel so good on me!'" he says in a ridiculous high-pitched voice that makes me laugh out loud. "Or did you shove him away from you like you'd just as soon kiss something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe?"

"The latter," I repeat around more laughter.

Peeta turns and kisses me on the top of my head again. "You didn't do anything wrong, Katniss. You can't control what Gale does."

I really want to stop talking and let this conversation end. This is exhausting, explaining myself and putting myself out there like that. But I decided on the train that I would open myself up, that I would share my thoughts with Peeta. Didn't I just say that I want to tell him everything? So instead of closing myself off and letting the conversation peter out, I force myself to voice the real fear that's been motivating me this entire time. "I just don't want to screw this up. I've never done anything like this before, and I'm…" I have to stop and swallow my nerve. Peeta just holds me and waits for me to continue. "I'm _afraid_, Peeta. I'm used to sticking to what I know, to what's familiar. I could never afford to take chances so I never took any. But now I'm doing something I've never done before, and I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm just afraid I'll screw it all up and wind up pushing you away. I'm afraid you'll get tired of waiting for me to figure things out and leave."

"I'll never do that," Peeta says harshly.

"You already did, once."

I don't mean that to sound accusatory, but as I feel Peeta's whole body stiffen next to me I can't imagine how else it might sound. "You're right," he says after a moment. I can almost feel him searching for words; when he's speaking to all of Panem he's as relaxed as can be, but somehow when it's just the two of us words elude him. I guess that's why he avoided me for a decade.

"You're right," he repeats. "I almost made the worst mistake of my life. But you stopped me. You didn't screw anything up, you stopped me from screwing everything up."

"I pushed you away," I say.

"No," Peeta says forcefully, "my own insecurities pushed me away."

I shake my head. It amazes me sometimes the lengths Peeta will go to to avoid placing blame on me, where it belongs. "I pushed you away, Peeta. I let you believe one lie after another, and I pushed you away."

Peeta only tightens his hold on me. "I thought we went over this on the train, remember? Nothing that happened in the Capitol is your fault. And you didn't push me away and you didn't let me believe anything. You stopped me and wouldn't let me walk away and made me listen until we had both explained things to each other. That's what you did. Just like in the arena, I tried to give up but you wouldn't let me. I'd have to be twelve times the idiot that I am to walk away from you after all of that."

"Losing people is all I've ever known," I say after a moment. Part of me is still surprised that I'm talking at all, that somehow I'm baring my soul to this boy who I spoke with for the first time only two months ago. But I already know the awful consequences of keeping secrets from him, and I'm not willing to risk it again. So I go ahead and bare my soul to my boy with the bread. "My father was my whole world, and I lost him. My mother was all I had left, and for all intents and purposes I lost her too. I dedicated my whole life to protecting Prim, and then watched her get reaped. My closest friend just walked out on me because he wants more from me than I'm willing to give him. And I almost lost the only man I've ever loved because I made him think it wasn't real."

Peeta hugs me close once again. "As usual, you don't give yourself nearly enough credit. I know losing your father was horrible, I can't even imagine what that must be like, but look at what you've done since then. You're so incredibly strong and brave I can't even express it." I want to respond, to protest, but the comfort of Peeta's embrace is too tempting, and instead I find myself staying silent and trying to pull myself even closer to him as he continues speaking. "Instead of thinking about everything you've lost, think about what you still have. Your mother was gone for a while, but look at her now, she's in there discussing skin salves with Hazelle and talking to my father about the old days, and I know she still cares about you even if she doesn't quite know how to show it. Prim is perfectly safe, thanks to you, you saved her from starvation and you practically raised her yourself and you saved her again at the reaping. Gale might need some time to cool down, but he'll come around. And you're not getting rid of me that easily, I'm staying right by your side until you tell me not to."

"That will never happen," I tell him emphatically.

"Then I'll always stay with you."

I finally work up the courage to turn and face him. His eyes are brimming with too many emotions to count: love, sorrow, concern, hope, but above all, a deep and abiding sincerity. I wonder how I ever doubted him during the Games; as smoothly as he charms strangers and audiences, when he turns those blue eyes on me I can see nothing but honesty in them. It's not that I can see in his eyes when he's lying to me; rather, I can see in his eyes that he never would. I pull him down towards me and capture his lips in a searing kiss. When we separate, I look straight into his eyes, once again overwhelmed by the depth of emotion shining from those blue orbs. "I love you. Don't ever leave me."

He looks straight back at me, and though I can see that a million different responses are on the tip of his tongue, he tells me exactly what I need to hear right now. "I love you. I'll never leave you."

We share more kisses as I gradually melt into Peeta's embrace. As someone wholly inexperienced with kissing until recently, I'm fascinated by the range of different kisses we can share. Some are fiery and passionate, some are desperate and needy, some are soft and gentle. But whether it's a kiss that leaves my lips bruised or a kiss so soft I can barely feel it, every one clearly communicates how much we love each other, how much we need each other, and every one leaves me wanting more. What form that more will take I'm not quite ready to explore yet, but I know we can both feel it coming.

Eventually I give Peeta one last peck, and rest my head back on his shoulder. He leans his head over against the top of mine and we settle in together. We sit like that for a long time, interrupted only when Peeta kisses my head again or I try to snuggle up a bit closer to him, the two of us enjoying the comfortable silence and sharing the peaceful night.

I can't help but try to soak up this feeling, this comfortable, relaxed togetherness. After so long spent either trying way too hard or being forcibly separated, sitting here, leaning on each other, holding each other, just_ being_ with each other, feels like a stolen luxury.

"This is nice," I finally say after a long while. "Just… being with you. For real. I missed you."

Peeta kisses my head again. "I missed you too," he whispers into my hair. I snuggle a little closer to him.

Eventually we're interrupted by the sound of the door opening. I look up to see my mother looking down at us, a look of concern on her face. Can she tell somehow that we were sucking each other's faces off earlier? Are we that obvious? "We're getting ready for dessert, the Mellarks brought a cake," she says.

"Okay, we'll be right there," I say. She looks like she wants to say more but she simply goes back inside, Peeta and I following a moment later. Everybody looks at us expectantly when we re-enter the room. I wish I knew how long we'd been gone. "Um, sorry, about disappearing like that," I stammer out. Then I see Hazelle looking at me. "Gale decided to leave-" I stop abruptly when I realize I have nothing else to add to that.

Luckily, Hazelle just smiles and nods her head. "It's okay, dear. I thought that might happen." She doesn't elaborate. I want to talk to her further, but not in front of everybody, so I just sit quietly as my mother and Peeta's father serve cake. The jovial mood from earlier in the evening has been lost.

…..

_So that's the big Gale showdown. Or is it only the first big Gale showdown? We shall see!_

_I'm trying very hard with this story not to fall into the trap of writing Gale as simply the Everlark antagonist. I'm not sure how successful I'll be, because there are certain roles I need him to fill as the story goes on, but hopefully I'll manage to avoid making him a moustache-twirling villain on the level of Snow or Coin._

_Next chapter: Fighting the nightmares, and an awkward breakfast._

_Preview quote from Chapter 3:_

"_Have you given any thought to… precautions?"_


	3. Nightmares

_I break into the clearing and Rue is lying there, trapped in a net, a spear buried deep in her gut. The gore around the wound makes me want to vomit, but when she speaks her voice is surprisingly soft. _

"_Why did you let me die?" Rue asks me. "I trusted you. Why didn't you protect me? Why did you abandon me?"_

_I want to respond to her, I want to tell her I tried my best, I want to tell her how sorry I am, but words don't form in my throat. I just stand there silently as sweet little Rue continues to upbraid me for her death. _

"_You left me. You let me die. You get banquets and dinners and awards and one of the biggest houses in District 12 and more money than any five merchants and it's all because you let me die. You let me die. You let me die. You let me die. You let me die…"_

_And suddenly it's not sweet little Rue laying in that net anymore, now it's a wolf-like mutt with dark fur and Rue's big, brown eyes, standing almost upright on its powerful hind legs, and somehow it's still repeating "You let me die, you let me die, you let me die…" as it angrily tears through the netting and leaps at me, and still all I can do is stand silent as the mass of angry teeth and razor claws descends upon me-_

I jerk awake screaming. It doesn't take me long to quiet the scream, it seems I've even managed to avoid waking Mom or Prim this time, but I sit up in bed gasping for breath for several minutes.

A part of me wants to blame my dream about Rue on Mr. Mellark bringing her up at dinner, but I know the nightmare would have come anyway, whether it involved Rue or not. I dread the night now. Ever since the Games, every night brings nightmares. Sometimes they're about people I watched die, or other horrors I witnessed. Sometimes they're about me dying in the arena. Sometimes they're about Peeta dying.

_Peeta._

I look out my bedroom window, and I can see that Peeta's light is on. I know he gets nightmares as well, we managed to exchange that information in one of the quick conversations we managed to sneak in between camera shots. Does he dream the same things I do? Do his dreams bother him as badly as mine bother me?

Since I don't dare go back to sleep anyway, I throw the covers off and head downstairs. Before I'm even aware that I've made the decision my feet have already carried me half-way to Peeta's house. The very first night without Effie and I'm already sneaking out. I didn't even bother with a jacket or shoes, I'm just standing on the side of the road in my nightgown. This doesn't overly concern me, though, since there are only five people living in Victor's Village and we're all family.

When I get to Peeta's door I can hear movement inside, he's obviously awake and doing something. I knock on the door. "Peeta," I call quietly, "It's me."

It takes a few moments for Peeta to open the door. He's dressed only in sleep pants and he has flour on his hands from whatever he's been baking. It's the first time I've seen him shirtless when he wasn't starving and half dead. I'm sure there are other boys in the district who are stronger, who have more defined muscles, who are taller, but something about Peeta is just perfect to me. He's breathtaking, for want of a better term.

"I've always liked this dream," he says as he smiles and gestures me inside, bringing me back to reality.

"What dream is that?" I ask, entering.

"The one where you show up at my house in the middle of the night without any clothes," he answers smoothly.

"Mmm, sounds nice," I agree. What the hell? Am I _flirting?_ First kissing, now flirting? I don't flirt. But then again, I don't date either, but here I am sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet up with the boy I love. Who's shirtless. And _gorgeous_.

I really need to get my mind settled. "Much nicer than the dream that sent me over here," I say. "I'm guessing it's much nicer than the dream that has you up baking in the middle of the night, too."

He lets his smile fall. "Yeah," he says. "So what can I do for you?"

"I saw your light was on so I just came over," I say. "I figured it was better than sitting alone afraid to go back to sleep."

"You'd rather sit at my house afraid to go back to sleep?" Peeta asks.

"Absolutely," I answer sincerely.

Peeta smiles and leads me into the kitchen. "Well, if you plan on being hungry later, I'll have rolls in about an hour."

"I'll try to work it into my schedule," I say, smiling again despite myself. I swear, the effect this boy has on me…

Time passes easily with Peeta. We talk, still getting used to the idea that we can just sit together and speak privately whenever we want to. We kiss, though neither of us seems quite willing to go much beyond that. We stare at each other and time disappears, until the kitchen timer interrupts us. Peeta bakes. I eat. Soon it's hours later, we're both yawning again and the sun still isn't even thinking of peeking over the horizon yet.

"I suppose we'll have to go back to sleep at some point," I say around another yawn.

Peeta stands. "Come on, I'll walk you home."

I don't know if this is a new realization or if I've suddenly found the reason I came over here in the first place, but as soon as Peeta mentions it, the idea of leaving and facing the rest of the night alone is unthinkable. "Actually, do you think I could just stay here?"

"Of course you can stay here if you want," Peeta says with a bemused look. "You know how many extra rooms these houses have."

"Peeta, I wasn't asking to sleep in a guest room," I say. I stand to face him, but then falter, suddenly nervous. "Do you really want to sleep alone tonight?"

"No," Peeta says. His face is tight, all signs of amusement gone. "I… No."

I finally close the step between us and lean up to give him a soft kiss. "Let's go to bed, Peeta."

He reaches out and takes my hand in his. We look into each other's eyes for just another moment before heading for the stairs. We'll face the nightmares the same way we ultimately faced their cause.

Together.

…..

I wake with a start. Where am I? Am I in the arena? No, this is a bed, but it's not my bedroom. It looks eerily similar to it, though. Is someone trying to trick me?

It's then that I realize that I'm being restrained. I pull against the restraints, only to discover I'm being held in place not by something, but by someone. Someone with strong, powerful arms is trying to corral my movements, making me struggle all the harder. I have to break free, I have to run away, I have to find Peeta.

_Peeta!_ My body freezes in the sudden onrush of last night's memories. It's only then that I hear the voice that I realize has been trying to break through my panic for a while. "Shhh, it's okay, you're safe, it's not real, it's just a dream, you're not in danger…"

Finally my whole body goes limp. I turn around to face Peeta and cling to him desperately. I let no tears flow, though I feel almost like I'm sobbing. We stay like this for several minutes.

"Another nightmare?" Peeta asks once I've calmed.

"No. I just… I woke up and I didn't know where I was, for a moment." I take several deep breaths to try to steady myself. "I'm sorry I woke you."

"Actually, I was already up for a few minutes. I was contemplating how to get up without disturbing you."

Eventually my nerves settle and we fall into a comfortable silence. Neither of us makes any attempt to leave, we simply lay there and hold each other. Eventually we begin exchanging the occasional soft kiss or murmur of affection. I can feel myself relaxing, truly relaxing, in some ways for the first time since Reaping Day. I feel so comfortable here with Peeta. Peaceful. Content. Such a contrast to the exaggerated public displays we've been putting on for the last month. _I need more of this in my life_, I think.

Eventually we're interrupted by an insistent knocking on his front door. We both look at each other questioningly.

"Expecting anyone?" I ask.

"No, not at this hour," he says.

"It can't be Effie, she went home yesterday," I offer.

"It's not Haymitch, he wouldn't be knocking," Peeta says.

"Or awake, this early in his hangover," I say.

"Maybe he's not hungover yet. Maybe he's still just drunk," Peeta suggests.

"He still wouldn't be knocking," I say.

It's clear neither one of us wants to get out of bed. Finally I say, "It's your house, you go answer it." Peeta gives me a look, so I add, "I didn't bring any clothes over here, all I have is my nightgown." Unable to argue with this, Peeta reluctantly gets out of bed, throws on a shirt to go with his sleep pants, and goes to answer the door. I try to listen, curious as to who it could be.

"Peeta!" I recognize Prim's voice immediately. I also recognize the panic that fills it. Did something happen to Mom? To Gale? I jump out of bed and start racing down the stairs as I hear her continue. "Peeta, have you seen Katniss? We got up this morning and she was gone! I don't think she went hunting, none of her hunting clothes are missing. I don't think _any_ of her clothes are missing, at least not anything she would wear willingly. It's been hours and there's no sign of her. We don't know what could have happened to her!"

Oh no. This is going to be awkward. It would be better if I at least had clothes to wear. For a moment I consider hiding upstairs, but then I decide I can't just leave Peeta in that position, so I go the rest of the way downstairs and walk over towards the door. Prim doesn't notice me for a moment as she's still animatedly explaining my disappearance to Peeta, but then she stops dead in the middle of a sentence with her mouth hanging open. I'm not sure what to say, so I start with "Hey, little duck." Getting no response, I continue, "I couldn't sleep, so I came over here to spend the night." Now she's glaring at me, like she's my 12-year-old mother. "Just to spend the night! Nothing else happened!"

Prim is still glaring at me. Finally Peeta breaks the silence. "Prim, Katniss didn't bring any clothes over here with her last night. You think you could go get her something to wear?" This does nothing to tame the glare she's giving me, but she nods and leaves. Peeta closes the door. "Well. That went well."

"I'm sorry I left you in the lurch like that. I didn't realize they'd react so strongly."

"It's okay. It's your first night not under surveillance and you vanished overnight. If I didn't know where you were I'd be concerned too."

"I'm always concerned when I don't know where you are," I find myself saying before I can stop myself, giving voice to the anxiety I've been feeling ever since we got out of the arena. The panic I felt when Peeta disappeared in the woods, when we were separated on the hovercraft, I feel a milder version of it all the time now, every second I'm not with him. As if a pack of mutts might burst in while his prep team is dressing him, or Cato might be waiting for him in the pantry. I'm sure it helps fuel my nightmares.

I expect Peeta to chuckle at my admission, or gently tease me for my overprotectiveness. But when I look to Peeta's eyes, instead of mirth I see recognition as he quietly says, "Me, too."

I don't really have anything else to say to that, so I wrap my arms around him and give him a long kiss. I realize that one reason why moments like laying in bed this morning, like sitting on the porch last night, like standing here holding each other in the entrance hall, one reason why they're so calm and peaceful is because in that moment I know exactly where Peeta is. I know that he's safe. And apparently Peeta feels the same way about me. _All the more reason why we should spend more time together._

Finally Peeta says, "Why don't you go back upstairs and grab a shower, I'll start breakfast and leave your clothes in my room when Prim gets back."

"Okay," I say, and give him one more quick kiss before heading back upstairs.

Showers are the one Capitolized luxury of our Victor's Village homes that I have unabashedly embraced. Bathing in the Seam meant boiling water on the stove, the bucket of boiling water added to the tub of cold to provide a lukewarm bath. I never could have imagined how soothing it is to stand under unending streams of hot water pouring over me. These houses may be too big, the furniture too fancy, the decoration too extravagant, and nine of them stand immaculate and empty while only a few miles away Seam families struggle to feed themselves and heat their homes. But I make no apologies for how much I enjoy the showers.

After my shower I can hear Prim and Peeta speaking downstairs. I see Prim has brought me an outfit from my Capitol-supplied wardrobe: a flower-printed dress of the type I used to mock girls from town for wearing, and shoes that came from a factory in Eight instead of from the Cartwright's shop or a trader at the Hob. Nothing as fancy as what I had to wear to the Victory events, but still more than I would normally wear myself. I can only assume that my mother had a hand in choosing this outfit; she had had a talk with me the other day about how I now had a status to live up to and should dress appropriately, which apparently to her meant dumping my father's leather jacket and my comfortable, worn-in boots in favor of new, fancy garments from the Capitol. She had left the room before I could counter that I was a Victor because I killed children, not because of how I dressed.

Sure enough, after I dress and go down to the kitchen, I find Peeta having breakfast with not just Prim, but also my mother. I hadn't heard her speaking at all before I came down. They all look up when I enter the room, but no one says anything until Peeta cuts the tension with, "Honey, we have guests!" Between the merriment in Peeta's eyes and the sharp look he gets from my mother, it takes everything I have to keep from bursting out laughing myself. I give him a peck on the cheek as I sit down next to him.

"So," my mother starts, "You spent the night here last night?"

"Yeah," I answer, "I'm sorry I worried you. I couldn't sleep. You know how I get nightmares now. We both do. I could see that Peeta was up too, so I just came over." I pause and eat my food for a few minutes. My mother looks like she's struggling to phrase her next question, and I speak before she does. "Actually, I'm thinking I'll just sleep over here from now on."

Peeta hides his shock at my declaration admirably well. Still, I think Prim can tell it came out of the blue for him. My mother is oblivious, as she gulps down her mouthful of food like she was about to choke on it. But when she speaks, she's remarkably subdued. "Do you really think that's… appropriate?"

"I think it's the only way either of us can get a decent night's sleep," I say. And since I really don't want to have a long discussion about it, I toss in, "As coping mechanisms go, I'd rank it ahead of Haymitch's drinking."

My mother looks at me for almost a full minute. "Prim says you told her that all you did here last night was sleep."

I can't believe I'm having this conversation. And I can't believe I'm having this conversation in front of Peeta. And Prim! But I don't want to let my mother know I'm embarrassed. The whole point of this is to get her to see me as capable of making my own life decisions, not a timid little girl. So I try to remain casual. "Well, that's not _all_ we did," I say. I can see her eyes widen before I continue. "We talked for a while, we ate, Peeta made rolls. But you're not asking about any of that, are you?"

She pauses for a moment, clearly choosing her words carefully. "Is sleeping all you plan to do in the future?"

Hopefully Peeta can continue his straight-faced routine for the rest of the meal. "No, not really."

I think Peeta's caught on to my strategy because he's having a far easier time not reacting to me now. Prim, on the other hand, is blushing furiously, and my mother looks like her eyes are about to bug out of her head. I finish my bite of food and continue. "I'm not saying anything's going to happen the second we finish cleaning the breakfast dishes or anything. We're not trying to rush into anything just for the sake of rushing it. But we're also not going to delay anything just for the sake of delaying it. If something happens, it happens."

"Don't you think you're a bit young for all of this?" my mother asks. She thinks I'm too young to have a relationship with Peeta, of course she thinks I'm too young to move in with him. But she doesn't have Effie and her army of Capitolites to enforce her whims anymore.

"Not anymore," I say, my implication clear.

My mother's still not buying it, though. "Just because you won the Hunger Games doesn't mean you're grown up," she says.

I sort of hate to do this to her, but I have to drive the point home. "I disagree. I think I'm plenty grown enough to start living my life." I pause for a moment but continue before she can interrupt. "Do you realize I've killed four people?" I can hear a little gasp from Prim, but I'm focused on my mother. "Four people are dead because I killed them. I dropped a tracker jacker nest on the Careers' campsite, waited for two of them to be stung so many times that they died, then went back and pried the weapons from their stiff, dead fingers. I shot a boy from District One whose name I don't even know, killed him as easily as I would a rabbit in the woods. With the bow I pried from the stiff, dead fingers of his district partner. Then I shot that boy Cato, I shot him and left him to be mutilated by a herd of mutts. I spent an entire night listening to his screams of agony and the sounds of his flesh being torn from his body, before I finally killed him as a mercy, because somehow after all of that he still wasn't dead. That's four people who are dead by my hand. Clearly I'm not too young to kill. How can you sit there and tell me I'm too young to love?"

My mother says nothing for a while. She looks like she's going to be sick. Hearing a short description of one tiny bit of the horror I've lived through is enough to make any sane person sick. Finally, in what I'm taking as a victory in this battle of wills, she asks, "Have you given any thought to… precautions?"

It's amusing to me how uncomfortable my mother seems when she asks this, considering she's a healer. "They gave us shots before the Games. Neither one of us is having kids for the next five years."

The table is quiet as we all return to eating. Finally my mother says, "Katniss, you know I only want what's best for you."

_Where was this whole 'wanting what's best for me' attitude when I was eleven and starving?_ I want to ask her, but this isn't really the time to bring that up again. "I know that," I tell her instead. "And I appreciate that, I do. But I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm sorry for upsetting you before, but that was my life. And believe me, living it was much more upsetting. I know I'm only sixteen, but I have lived through things that only two other people in this District can even imagine. I've fought for my life, and not as a metaphor like fighting an illness or fighting starvation, but literally fighting against a trained killer bent on killing me. I've fought for my life, and I've fought for Peeta's life. I've watched people die by my hand. I watched a little girl die in my arms because I failed to protect her and she reminded me so much of Prim that it hurt to look at her. I watched a girl smile at me as she prepared to carve me up like a dead squirrel, then get her head crushed by a rock. And now, after all of that, I'm home, and I get to live, and I'm not going to put any part of my life on hold just because you think my age hasn't reached a high enough number."

No one says anything. I've probably gone too far, I know. Nobody can really understand the effect of the Games who wasn't in them. That's what I was just saying to Gale last night. But I at least need my mother to understand that she doesn't understand.

Whether she does or she doesn't, she seems to have given up on the argument, as we eat the rest of our meal in silence.

…..

"Marvel."

Mom and Prim have gone home. Even after they left, the tense atmosphere remained. I expected that Peeta would want to have some sort of discussion about my inviting myself to move into his house. I didn't think Peeta would reject the idea, exactly, but I still thought he wouldn't be thrilled about my announcing it to my mother without even discussing it with him first. I did regret springing it on him like that, it felt a little too close to how he ambushed me with his declaration of love in front of all of Panem. But somehow neither of us can find words to speak, and the heavy silence that had drowned the end of breakfast remains around us. Peeta and I have been silently cleaning up after breakfast for about ten minutes when, without even pausing what he's doing or looking up at me, he speaks this single word. I stare at him for a moment, almost too confused to form a response. "What?" I finally ask him.

Peeta looks up to stare out the window, but still doesn't look at me. "The boy from District One. The one who killed Rue. His name was Marvel."

"Oh." Of course Peeta would know this, he spent days with the Career pack. He might have known Marvel pretty well. Shared meals with him. Slept next to him. Traded watch shifts with him. Chatted around the campfire. Shared stories of home. Dreams of what they'd do if they won. Marvel was his ally in the arena before I was. It's a testament to how little we discuss the Games that I could still not know his name.

"What about the District Four girl?" I ask after a while.

"Tanyah," Peeta answers quietly.

Marvel and Tanyah. It had never occurred to me that I didn't even know the names of half of the people I killed in the arena. But now I do. Now I know the names of Marvel and Tanyah. What I don't know is if knowing their names makes me feel better, or worse.

…..

_Katniss's relationship with her mother in this story is very interesting to me. I didn't plan at all for it to take the direction it did. Much like Gale I sometimes fear that I've reduced her to just another Everlark antagonist, or even worse the same misunderstanding parent figure that appears in nearly every story about teenagers. But when I took the description from Catching Fire of how she started taking care of Katniss after the Games, and added in the increased emotional maturity and independence that Katniss has in this AU, what I ended up with was this conflict. _

_On a more personal note, I really want to thank everybody for the support and appreciation this story has gotten so far. This story is kind of my baby, it's the first piece of HG fanfic I ever wrote, the first HG story I wanted to tell, so it's great to see so many people enjoying it. I just hope you don't all hate me when I get to the end of what I have written so far and update times become subject to the whims of me finding time to write! :)_

_Next chapter: Moving day! Complete with sexual objectification, more mother-daughter conflict, and cookies._

_Preview quote from Chapter 4:_

"_Both of you stop talking about my ass!"_


	4. Moving Day

It's almost an hour later when Peeta and I go over to my house – well, I guess my old house, now. When we walk in, Prim is sitting alone on a couch, playing with Buttercup. She looks up as we enter. The cat just hisses at me and scampers off to some other part of the house. "Mom's upstairs in her room," Prim says flatly. "I don't think she's too happy with you."

It's weird seeing Prim so glum. I must have really upset her this morning. I need to talk to her, but first I need to cheer her up. "Well, I'm not too happy with her either," I say. "Look at what she gave me to wear!" I do a quick spin as if I were with Cinna, and manage to drag a small laugh out of Prim.

"I know you don't like dresses, but they really do look beautiful on you," Prim says.

"But they're so impractical!" I can't even imagine trying to go to the woods dressed like this. Knowing I'll get no support from Prim, I turn to Peeta. "What do you think?"

Peeta looks like I imagine I did during my first interview with Caesar Flickerman, stunned and frightened. "What?" he asks dumbly.

"You spend enough time looking at me," I reason. "Do you think I look better in pants or in dresses?"

Peeta still looks stupefied. Prim starts smiling and avoiding my looks. Is there something here that I'm missing?

Finally Peeta says, "I think you look beautiful in anything you wear."

This answer seems to please Prim greatly, but I just roll my eyes. "Come on, you must have a preference?"

"Well…" Peeta doesn't look dumbstruck by the question anymore, but something is still holding him back from answering. "Do you really want to talk about this in front of Prim?" he says as a blush begins to tint his cheeks.

"You're not going to hurt her feelings if you disagree with her," I say. "Come on. Spit it out, Mellark!"

"Um…" Peeta looks away at a wall, and speaks quietly and quickly. "Um, I like the way you look in pants, because pants follow the contours of your body and really show off the curves of your hips and ass."

The room is completely silent for a long moment. I realize my jaw is hanging open and struggle to close it. Of all the aspects of suddenly being in a relationship that are completely new to me, I never saw this one coming. I've been called beautiful before – by Prim, by Cinna, by Peeta. But Peeta is describing my body as if he thinks it's… I don't even know. Attractive? Desirable? _Sexy?_ I've never been any of those things, and I'm pretty sure no one has ever thought of me as any of those things. My body is small, lean, and straight, made so by years of working hard in the woods and not eating enough. I don't have much in the way of womanly curves, not compared to the well-fed girls from town, and the third- and fourth-hand mended and patched clothing I normally wear hardly serves to accentuate them.

Peeta is looking back at me now, with a small hint of a grin on his face. It's half smug, half apologetic. It's the kind of look he gives me when he can tell I don't believe one of his compliments. I've never handled compliments well, but when someone compliments my shooting or my plant knowledge I can usually muster a grudging acknowledgement. But Peeta compliments me for things I know aren't true. I can deal with it when he calls me strong, or tough. But what do I do when he calls me beautiful? Or kind? Or attractive? I want to be annoyed by his insincerity, but I know he's being sincere. The conclusion that makes the most sense to me is that Peeta is simply delusional. Why else would he have such a high opinion of me?

Usually this is when Peeta reiterates himself a few times in an attempt to convince me of the truth of his praise, but before he can do that the momentary silence is broken when Prim clamps both hands over her mouth and almost falls off the couch in a fit of giggles. I regain my senses and smack Peeta hard on the arm. "Don't talk like that in front of Prim!"

"I asked you!" Peeta says, stepping back and raising his hands defensively. "I tried to beg off, but you said, _'Spit it out, Mellark!'_"

I don't quite know what to say to that. Before I can come up with something, Prim says, "You do have a nice ass, Katniss." I turn to look at her, my jaw hanging open. "I think it's all that stalking around the woods," she muses, analyzing me as if I were a patient. "It really works the gluteal muscles."

"Well whatever she's doing, it's working," Peeta chimes in with a smirk.

I try to smack Peeta's arm again, but he swats my hand away and takes another step back. "Both of you stop talking about my ass!" I demand.

"Okay, what part of you should we talk about then?" Peeta says with a glint in his eye.

"Don't," I warn him.

"Can we talk about Peeta's ass?" Prim asks, her face full of mischief. "Cause that thing is a freaking work of art!"

I'm choking. I think I'm actually choking. Is my sweet and innocent baby sister… ogling a guy's ass? Isn't she years too young to be doing something like that? Or is it just that I never took notice of things like that until years after I should have? Depressingly enough, I think I know what the answer is.

"Oh really?" Peeta says, having recovered from his shock more quickly than I did. He makes a ridiculous twisting motion, turning back and forth in a comical attempt to look down at his own backside. "A work of art, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," Prim says far too enthusiastically for my liking. "All the girls at school are jealous of Katniss cause she gets to touch it."

I blush and look away, because if Prim sees my reaction, it's far too likely that she'll intuit the reason for it, which would only prolong this conversation when I desperately want it to end. As much as we've let ourselves get lost in kisses lately – last night during dinner, overnight at Peeta's house, this morning when we were supposed to be getting ready to come over here – Peeta and I have not yet arrived at the butt-touching stage of our relationship. Is that something you're supposed to do before you move in together?

"Hear that, Katniss?" Peeta says playfully. "I have hordes of twelve-year-old girls who want to touch my ass."

I lift a threatening finger towards Peeta. "Your ass is _mine_, Mellark."

Peeta grabs my hand and uses it to pull me towards him as he steps forward, erasing the small distance between us and closing his arms around my waist. "Damn right," he says. "Every other part of me too. I'm yours, Katniss." He leans down and gives me a soft, sweet kiss. I let out a soft sigh and relax into his embrace as my arms find their way around his neck.

I look up into those blue eyes I love so much. "I'm yours, too. You know that, right?" Peeta just smiles and nods at me. I give him another quick peck on the lips and then push away from him. "Good. Now do me a favor and go box up some of those useless Capitol clothes for me while I talk to my sister."

"Sure thing," he says with a lopsided smirk. "Feel free to stare at my ass while I walk away." I just shake my head at his antics before settling on the couch next to Prim.

"You're not going to get mad at me for talking about Peeta like that, are you?" Prim asks.

"No, I'm not mad at you," I say, giving her a small smile. "I'm more worried about you being mad at me."

"For what?" she asks.

"For this morning." Prim looks troubled, but she doesn't deny it. "I know you were a lot more worried than you're trying to let on. I'm sorry I did that to you."

"You could have told me that you were going over there," she says, and it completely takes me by surprise. It hadn't even occurred to me that she might think I was keeping secrets from her. "I wouldn't… judge you or anything. I wouldn't tell Mom if you didn't want me to."

"I know you wouldn't, Prim. I know that," I try to reassure her. "I wasn't trying to hide anything from you. I just went over there when I woke up."

"You didn't tell me you were still having nightmares," she says, somehow sounding both concerned and hurt.

Her question surprises me again. Did she think they stopped just because I managed not to wake her and Mom for a few nights? "I have them every night, Prim. I thought you knew that."

"Does Peeta really help you with them?" she asks. She and my mother tried to help me with the nightmares when I first came back, everything from herbs to calm my nerves to spending the night with me like we used to in our old house in the Seam, but nothing did any good. Eventually I made them both stop; I wasn't going to sleep anyway, they may as well get the chance.

"I think he's the only one who can," I say quietly. "He's the only one who was there. When the nightmares were real."

Prim doesn't say anything in response, she just leans forward to hug me, and I don't hesitate to return it. It occurs to me that I may be seeing a lot less of my baby sister now. I take a good look at her as we sit back, suddenly second-guessing myself. "Are you going to be okay, Prim? With me moving out? Cause if you're worried, I can-"

"I'll be fine, Katniss," she cuts me off. "I'll have Mom here. And you're just moving up the street."

"That's right, I'll be just up the street," I say, carefully avoiding any mention of our mother. Prim notices this immediately.

"Mom will take care of me, Katniss," she says. "You never give her enough credit, she's been getting better for a long time now. She didn't go away for even one day while you were gone."

I can't trust my mother, not after the left us to die. But I don't want to fight about it with Prim, so I just make a grunt of acknowledgment rather than say anything. Her soft smile tells me she understands.

"I'll just be right up the street if you need me," I reiterate. "You can come over any time if you want to. Peeta and I are both here for anything you need."

"I know," she says. "Peeta's really nice."

I smile. "He is."

"Do you think you'll marry him?" she asks.

The question brings me up short. My first instinct is to say no. I've never wanted to get married, because marriage leads to children. But that plan also included never falling in love, and I've already broken that vow. And I as good as announced at breakfast today that Peeta and I would be engaging in the activity that actually does lead to children.

"I mean, most people get married when they move in together," Prim continues when I don't reply. She's right, unmarried couples living together is almost unheard of in Twelve. The practice isn't just frowned upon, it's impractical. For the merchants, marriage and children are an investment, insurance that there will be someone to pass on the family business to. And in the Seam, where just feeding yourself is often a struggle, few women are willing to risk pregnancy without a husband committed to support any possible children.

Of course, Peeta and I don't have to worry about those issues. Neither of us will inherit a business, we don't need it with out Victor's winnings and we're not in line for one anyway. One of Peeta's brothers will take over the bakery, and the other will have to find work elsewhere, most likely with his father-in-law. To whatever extent my mother's healing counts as a business, Prim will take that over. And as far as children, I could support a litter on my own with my winnings, even if the idea of Peeta abandoning either me or his child wasn't entirely unthinkable.

If I were willing to consider having children. Which I'm not.

I force the idea of children from my mind, and instead actually think about Prim's question. I'm still resistant to the idea of marrying on a gut level, but all of my reasons for resisting are no longer valid. I was never going to marry because I was never going to fall in love – well, too late for that. I was never going to marry because I was never going to have children – except with the shots they gave us in the Capitol, we're not having children regardless of what we do. By the end of the day I'll be living with a man, with the man I love, sharing my life, sharing his bed. Would being married really change our situation much at that point?

"I don't know," I finally say. "Maybe one day."

"I think you should," she says. "It'd be neat to have Peeta for a brother. I really like him."

"So I heard," I mutter.

Prim looks away in embarrassment, but I can see that she's smiling. "I thought you weren't mad about that."

"I'm not mad, Prim, I promise," I say. "I'm just not used to you being old enough to talk about that stuff."

"I'm _twelve_, Katniss," she huffs, as if twelve is all grown up. I remember when I was twelve, I was still struggling trying to feed us all and I missed my father terribly and I measured myself against his memory and I couldn't have felt any more alone or any _less_ grown up. But I did all of that for a reason. I did it all for Prim. I did it so Prim could have the luxury of _not_ bearing the burdens of an adult, so she could have the luxury of gossiping about cute boys with her friends and feeling like that made her all grown up.

"Just cause you're _twelve_ now doesn't mean I'm going to start treating you differently, Little Duck." I poke her in the ribs; she laughs and swats my hand away.

"Does that mean we can't talk about Peeta's ass?" she asks mischievously.

Inwardly, I sigh. Prim really is growing up. There isn't any medical treatment that Mom won't let her help out with anymore. She's old enough for the reaping; in fact, she was reaped. And now she's interested in boys, in a more obvious way than just hanging around with Rory Hawthorne. Part of me wants to try to keep her young for as long as possible, but I know what a foolish mistake that would be. Just look at how I react towards my mother when she tries to treat me like I'm younger than I really am. No, Prim is growing up, and if I don't want our close relationship to be left behind as just another relic of her childhood, then I need to do one of the hardest things I've ever had to do for her: I need to let her.

"Well…" I begin with another sigh, "It is quite nice." Prim giggles some more.

…..

An hour later, I'm up in my old room packing up some things. My flowery dress and toe-pinching shoes have been replaced by items of my own clothing I found buried at the back of one closet, some comfortable trousers and an old hunting shirt, and my worn-in boots.

I can't believe how much stuff I have to move now that the Capitol supplied me with a wardrobe. Peeta has just left with another box of clothes to bring to his house – _our house_ – when there's a knock on the door and my mother walks in. It's the first time I've seen her since I came over. "Katniss, can I talk to you for a moment, in private?" she asks, closing the door behind her before I can even answer.

"Sure, Mom," I say, though I'm dreading this conversation. I really don't want to rehash everything we said this morning.

"I know your mind's made up about this, and I'm not here to try to stop you," she says, "but are you really sure this is the right decision for you?"

"Yes, Mom," I say. "I'm sure."

"I'm just… I'm worried about you, Katniss. I-" My mother seems to stumble over her words for a moment, but then soldiers on. "You don't know this, but when I was younger, before I married your father, there was another man I was dating. A merchant's son." _Peeta's father_, I think, but she doesn't say so. Apparently she wasn't watching the day Peeta told me this story in the cave. That or the Gamemakers decided not to broadcast it. "Our parents thought it was a good match. And he was a good man, who genuinely loved me. He would have made a fine husband and father. We were even discussing marriage. But I didn't really love him. I loved your father. I may have been happy with the merchant, but I would have lost my love. And I let that love make my decision for me. And even after… well, _after_, I never regretted choosing your father. Because love is the most precious thing there is in this world." She sighs. "I just don't want to see you make the same mistake that I almost made."

In this moment she's so sincere, so open. And for the first time in my life, I understand what she's saying about love. Though I don't want to admit it, I'm even beginning to understand what happened to her after Dad died. I almost want to hug her. "Don't you see, Mom? You have this entire thing backwards. Gale is the man that everyone expects me to wind up with. But Peeta is the man I love. And I'm making the exact same choice you did."

She stares at me for a moment, as if she's looking at me for the first time. I'm almost afraid she's zoned out again when she says, "You know I just want you to be happy."

"I know," I say, smiling a bit. "Peeta makes me happy."

We pack quietly for a few minutes. After closing up one box, Mom turns to me. I pause and look at her, expecting her to say something, but she's silent for a long time. She looks like she's searching for words. "Mom?" I finally prompt her.

She finally begins speaking, but still seems to be unsure as to what to say. "Katniss, I- You know that- Well…" She pauses and closes her eyes for a moment while sighing heavily. When she opens her eyes again, she finally speaks. "Katniss, I know I haven't been much of a mother to you."

"You abandoned us." I don't mean to attack her, but the words tumble from my mouth before I can stop them.

She looks like I just slapped her with my words, but after a moment she just nods. "You're right. I did. I wasn't there for you. And I can't change things now, I can't take back those years when you had to shoulder the burdens of a girl twice your age. But I can be here for you now."

"How are you here for me now?" I can't help but scoff. "You spent years in a grief-stricken stupor because you lost the man you loved, and all you've done since I got home is try to keep me away from the man I love."

Mom looks like I slapped her again. I have a feeling that if we keep talking about this it's a look she'll be wearing for a while. "I didn't realize you felt so strongly about him," she says.

"How would you realize anything, we hadn't even talked yet!" I'm becoming more agitated now. "You had barely said 'Welcome home' before you were telling the whole country you wouldn't allow us to be together. You could have asked me how I felt first! You could have at least met Peeta before you tried to force him out of my life! How did you think you had the first clue what you were doing when you did that?"

My mother sighs. "To be honest, Katniss, I really didn't think this whole thing between you two was… real."

This brings me up short. "What?" I ask dumbly.

"I've never known you to be interested in… boys, or romance," she explains. "And you spent all of your time with Gale, I thought that if you were interested in anyone, it was him. I just assumed that this whole thing with Peeta was some kind of strategy for the Games."

Part of me wants to snap at my mother, because that's what I'm used to doing. She still could have asked me first rather than make assumptions. But she's not entirely wrong; at first it was all about strategy. And if our love was still just an act, if I was looking for an excuse to separate myself from Peeta, I could easily see myself embracing my mother's prohibition. Being thankful for her quick thinking. Holing up in my too-big Victor's house and using my mother's proclamation to shield myself from the boy I was too afraid to love.

"It started out that way. As a strategy, I mean." I'm not entirely sure why I'm explaining this to her. I certainly don't want or need her approval, except that it might be easier if I didn't have to fight with her about this anymore. "I guess it worked a little too well."

Mom considers this for just a moment. "And what happens when the rush of emotion from the Games starts to fade?"

"That's not what this is," I say, the familiar frustration that usually accompanies any prolonged conversation with my mother beginning to build once again.

"How do you know that?" she asks. "I know first love can feel overwhelming-"

"That's not what this is," I say again, my frustration mounting.

"This isn't you're first love?" she asks, as if she's making some sort of point. "I know it feels real, but believe me in a few years you'll look back on this and-"

"Stop it," I say angrily, interrupting her patronizing dismissal of my thoughts and feelings. Who exactly is she to think she knows my mind and my heart better than I do? "You don't get to do that. You don't get to stand there and ignore everything I'm trying to tell you. You don't get to act like you know how I feel better than I do. Not when I've done more parenting in the last five years than you have." It's a low blow, and it earns me another of those just-got-slapped looks from my mother, but I'm too angry to care right now, all of my anger and frustration from the past month pouring out into this conversation. "I'm not young anymore, Mom, no matter how often you repeat it. Maybe you were young when you were my age, good for you that you had that luxury. But I haven't been young in a long time. Just because I was eleven when you quit being my mother doesn't mean you can still treat me like I'm eleven now that you've decided to try again."

When I finish my diatribe and see the pain on my mother's face, a part of me feels bad for hurting her like this. She doesn't even try to respond now, apparently as lost for words as I am. Part of me may feel bad, but nothing I'm saying is untrue, and in the end she brought this on herself with her actions. If she wanted to try to be a mother again, she could have done it without being so presumptuous and controlling. She could have simply been happy that I survived and that I found love and not made so many assumptions and not tried to keep me away from Peeta. Then maybe I could be more understanding of her efforts.

There's that word again. _Understanding._ Hadn't I been thinking that all month, that suddenly I was beginning to _understand_ my mother's reaction to my father's death? That I _understood_ what she had been going through? And as I look at her stricken face, the anger starts to seep out of me, and I suddenly feel the need to communicate this. To let her know that, despite everything that I blame her for, despite how I treat her sometimes, I don't hate her. To make her _understand._

"Look, Mom," I begin, my voice much calmer now, "I don't know what's going to happen here. I get that you want to try to make amends, but the fact is I don't need that kind of mothering right now. I've learned to live without it. I've outgrown it."

Ugh. This is why I don't ever try to make people feel better, because I'm horrible at it. I take a breath and try again. "What happened after Dad died, it is what it is. I'm not saying it was okay and I'm not saying that I'm not still angry about it, but it's done. It's in the past. Nothing can change any of that now. But, we don't need to be trapped by the past."

For the first time in the conversation, my mother's expression improves slightly. I realize that that might be the nicest thing I've said to her in five years. But before either of us can say anything more Peeta opens the door and comes in carrying several empty boxes. "I think we're going to have to turn one of the spare bedrooms into a closet just to hold our two Capitol wardrobes-" he starts to say before finally registering who's in the room. "Oh, hello Mrs. Everdeen." He looks concerned when he finds us here alone, no doubt remembering our tense conversation this morning, but I flash him a smile to let him know everything's okay. Mom tries to smile at him, but doesn't say anything.

"Mom and I were just talking," I say to fill the silence.

"Well, that's good," Peeta says neutrally. He puts the boxes down on the bed and walks over to me. He goes to hug me, and leans his head down to whisper in my ear. "You okay?"

I look up at him as he straightens up and nod. His face visibly relaxes, "Do you want me to leave you two alone?" he asks quietly.

I look back to my mother for a moment. She's studiously ignoring us, staring at the half-full box in front of her. "Yeah, I think that might be best," I say. I gesture to the box Mom and I just filled. "Can you bring this box over? Just give us another ten or fifteen minutes."

"Sure, no problem." He leans in a gives me a quick kiss. "I'll see you later."

"Love you," I say quickly before he turns away.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing the way Peeta's whole face brightens when I tell him I love him. "I love you," he says, and kisses me again before taking the box and leaving.

I look over to Mom to find that she's watching me with a curious expression. I quirk my eyebrows in question and wait for her to say something. "You two look different," she finally says.

"Different how?" I ask her.

"You're acting differently," she says. "You've been home a month and now you're suddenly acting differently."

It takes me a moment to realize what she's saying. "The cameras are gone. We can be ourselves now."

She shakes her head. "This isn't how you've been acting together off-camera this past month."

"We haven't _been_ together off-camera for the past month," I say. "You and Effie made sure of that."

Mom sighs heavily. "Katniss, I was just looking out for what's best for you-"

I don't let her finish. "No, you weren't, Mom. Don't pretend that anything you did was for my benefit."

Mom looks hurt, and again part of me feels bad for making her feel that way. But she needs to see the truth. "Mom, I know you want what's best for me. I completely believe you when you say that. But you need to understand that _you don't know_ what's best for me." Mom gives me a sad look, but I press on. "You haven't been a parent to me for almost five years, you don't know what those years did to me and you don't have the first clue what I went through in the Games. You don't know me, you don't know what I need, you don't know what I want, and you don't know what's best for me. I'm not trying to hurt you by saying that, but it's true, and if you really want to try to rebuild something between us then you're going to have to accept it. Otherwise you're going to keep doing more harm than good."

Mom considers this for a long time. "What do you want from me, Katniss?" she finally asks.

This is a question I hadn't prepared for. What do I want from my mother? "I don't know," I respond. "I've been fending for myself for so long. I don't think I know how to be a daughter any more than you know how to be my mother." I think for a long moment. "Just… Take care of Prim. Be here for her. She needs you, a lot more than I do. And us, we'll just have to figure it out as we go."

We go back to packing for a few minutes before Mom turns to me again. "I do love you, Katniss. I know- I know I've failed you when you needed me, but I do love you, and I do want what's best for you."

"I know, Mom. I love you too." She walks over to embrace me, and I hug her back. As we go back to filling boxes, I continue speaking. "Mom, um, I just wanted to say…" The words that have been forcing themselves out of me all morning suddenly dry up on me. But I know I need to say this now. "Everything that happened, after Dad died, I don't know if I can ever move past that. If you're looking for forgiveness, or absolution, or whatever. I don't think I could ever offer that. But I just wanted to say that, well, I understand."

Mom looks more confused than ever. "You understand?"

I nod. "Well, maybe not fully, but I get it." I think to how I felt for the last month, when I couldn't see Peeta. How I felt in the first days after my father died, before I made myself stop feeling anything because I had to take care of Prim. How I feel in my dreams, when I see Peeta die. I can feel my heart clench just at the thought. "I understand how someone's absence can choke the life out of you. How the world just feels empty and pointless. How the enormity of your loss can blind you to what you still have." I shake my head slightly, trying to clear it of these morbid thoughts. "I can't forgive you for what happened to Prim and me, I don't think I'll ever be able to do that. But I can understand what happened to you."

Mom doesn't reply for a moment. "And what brought on this, 'understanding?'"

"I finally know what it feels like to love someone like that," I tell her quietly.

Neither of us says anything for a moment, and in the silence I can hear the clomping of Peeta's gait as he walks up the stairs. I can't help the slight smile that ticks up the corners of my mouth at the mere thought of seeing Peeta again, even though he was just here ten minutes ago. Mom must see my reaction, because her face softens and she begins to smile as well.

Ever the gentleman, Peeta knocks at the door. I chuckle to myself as I open it for him. "Hey," he says, a huge smile on his face. "You guys okay?"

"Yeah. I think we're good," I say.

"That's good," he says. "Why don't you take a break? There're cookies in the kitchen if you guys want some."

I quirk my eyebrow at him. "Cookies?"

"Yeah, I brought some over with me. Though I'd hurry if you want any." He takes a few steps back towards the staircase and raises his voice to call downstairs. "_Somebody_ came in from feeding her goat and started gobbling them all up, without considering that anyone else might want some!"

Prim's voice comes up from out of sight. "You had some too!"

"I had to make sure they came out okay!" Peeta counters. "That was just quality control!"

Prim makes a noise in reply, but if it was supposed to contain words they were muffled by what I can only assume is the cookie filling her mouth. I can't help but smile at the exchange.

"So," I say, trying to sound serious, "while we've been over here working, you've been making cookies?"

Peeta just grins at me. "Cookies are easy. The dough doesn't need to rise and they only bake for about ten minutes. When you said you needed fifteen minutes, I thought that's the perfect amount of time for some cookies. But, if you have a problem with me stopping to make cookies, you don't have to eat any." He tries to make a serious face to go with the last sentence, but it comes across as more of a pout. He looks so adorable that I just have to pull him into a kiss, both of us grinning.

We take about five steps towards the stairs before I remember my mother is still in the bedroom. I find her sitting on the bed, putting a few small items into a box. "Mom?" I ask. "Are you coming?"

"You two go ahead," she says. "I'll be down in a bit."

I just nod at her, unsure of what to say and not really wanting to analyze her thinking right now. Peeta and I join Prim in the kitchen, where she sits in front of a three-quarters full plate of cookies. "I didn't eat them all!" she protests, even as she holds a half-eaten cookie in her hand. I just smile at her and ruffle her hair.

I sit with the two people I love most in the world and enjoy freshly baked cookies with chilled goat's milk. Prim tells Peeta about how Lady is handling the move to the Victor's Village; apparently she likes the large lawn behind the house. Peeta asks for some cheese the next time Prim makes it; he has an idea to bake the cheese into a pastry bun. He thinks that the tangy, savory cheese will mix well with the slight sweetness of the bun. I'm skeptical, but he's the baker, so I guess I'll wait and see.

At one point I look up and see Mom standing in the doorway watching us with a curiously unreadable expression on her face. Is she glad to see her children smiling and happy? Sad to see a second person now helping to fill the void she left in Prim's life? I don't know. But when she finally sits at the table and Peeta passes her a cookie, she smiles at him. I take it as a good sign.

…..

_Cheese in a bun? I can't imagine anyone who would enjoy that. _

_There's another scene I meant to add to the end of this chapter, but this was getting kind of long and the new scene isn't written yet, so I cut this off here so I could finally update._

_The next chapter just kind of happened, a bit originally meant for the end of this chapter and a bit originally meant for the beginning of the next chapter, a fluffy little interlude from all the family drama, consisting mostly of Katniss and Peeta in bed together. _

_Preview quote from Chapter 5:_

"_You're my dream. Always have been. I'm living my dream."_


	5. Growing Together

Once we get back to our house, it doesn't take Peeta and me very long to put my things away. We find places in our room for the few things I want in there, place my few other belongings around the house, and there's plenty of room in the dresser for the small subset of my wardrobe I actually plan on wearing. The rest goes into the closets of the bedroom next to ours, as the closets of our room are already full of Peeta's Capitol clothes. We don't plan on touching either collection until the next time cameras show up.

Between packing and unpacking, I do find some pieces that end up in the dresser instead of the closets. Plain pants and tops without any ornate embellishments. Rugged trousers and shirts I can wear in the woods. Even a few undergarments that seem to be designed with utility in mind instead of display. I appreciate Cinna's efforts to give me at least a few clothes I can actually use.

It's while we're folding clothes and putting them away in the dresser that Peeta stops and sits back so suddenly that I start, as though he's just noticed some danger and I need to be ready to protect him. My eyes quickly scan all of the room's potential entrances before I remind myself that we're not in the Games anymore.

"You know, I think this is the first time we've ever done anything normal together," he says.

"Yeah," I agree after a moment. Our whole relationship has been tainted by the Capitol, our actions planned and orchestrated from the reaping until just yesterday. And coming over here in the middle of the night just to try to survive the terrors in my head, that could hardly be considered normal. But folding clothes? Organizing closets? Placing my things around my new home? It doesn't get much more normal than that. "Nice for a change," I add with a small smile that Peeta doesn't hesitate to return.

Once we're done moving my stuff in, Peeta makes us dinner consisting of a quick bread and some meat from our Capitol ration. I don't like eating the Capitol-supplied meat. Even though it comes from District 10 and not the Capitol itself. And it's not like we'd be allowed to give it to hungry Seam families if we didn't eat it. We've already helped feed everyone with Parcel Day, anyway.

Still, I vow that we won't be eating from our ration anymore once I can get back to the Hob. Peeta just smiles at me from across the table and shakes his head a bit. I find his reaction curious, and look to him for an explanation. "It's nothing. It's just…" He pauses for a moment as he collects his thoughts. "You're always surprising me. Sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all."

I can feel myself scowling at him. "We've certainly been through enough together, we should know a little something about each other by now."

"Well, sure, but we've always been dealing with life and death. We've never had a normal conversation with one another," he says.

I'm starting to see what he means. "So… you want to have a normal conversation?"

"Yeah," he says with a nod. "I mean, wouldn't it be nice to talk about normal things? Isn't it strange that I know you'd risk your life to save mine, but I don't know what your favorite color is?" A smile creeps onto my lips as I answer.

We spend the rest of the evening having a _normal_ conversation, and I learn all sorts of normal things about Peeta, except they're not normal to me because I'm learning more about Peeta. His favorite color is soft orange, like the early sunset before the sky turns deep red. He takes his tea without sugar, despite growing up in the bakery where they always had sugar on hand. He likes to sleep with the windows open, a habit he formed because after working in front of the ovens all day he craved the cool breeze, even in the dead of winter. His favorite time of year is fall, because of the colors, and because the Games are over for another year. When he was very young, his maternal grandmother lived with the family, and unlike her daughter she was very kind and loving towards the three kids.

And I tell him about myself. Not soul-rending confessions that I could never imagine myself making before we met, but simple things that I might otherwise use to deflect from more personal topics, but Peeta listens as intently as if I were divulging my deepest secrets. I tell him my favorite color is green, like the foliage in the woods. I tell him my favorite season is spring, because it means rebirth, and that I've survived another winter. I tell him I never knew any of my grandparents. I tell him about using my father's bow and his leather hunting jacket, how they make me feel like he's still a part of my life. I tell him about how Gale and I met, how it took years for us to trust each other but eventually we became as close as family. I tell him about my failed attempts to teach Prim to hunt, and how secretly I was glad she reacted the way she did, that she kept her natural compassion even despite our desperate circumstances.

It surprises me again how much we seem to already know about each other. Peeta suggests that one of the reasons I loved the lamb stew in the Capitol so much is that, among all the delicious concoctions we were served there, the comparatively simple stew was the closest to something we might have eaten here in Twelve. I point out that Peeta always double-knots his shoelaces; he explains that he once tripped over his laces and ruined an entire tray of cookies he had just finished icing, and after his mother was done punishing him for the infraction he vowed to never make that mistake again. Peeta mentions that I tend to rub a particular spot over my left eyebrow; I explain that when I'm stressed I sometimes get headaches in that spot.

We've finished dinner and moved to a couch in the living room, turned sideways to face one another with our knees touching, when he says something that brings me up short.

"Rye was so worried about his last reaping," he says. "He tried to hide it with that sarcastic attitude of his, but he was terrified. I thought it was funny, considering I had more slips than he did-"

I don't hear the rest of Peeta's story. That sentence won't leave my head, and it takes me several moments to figure out exactly why. "Wait, how could you have more entries than Rye?"

Peeta just looks at me. When the answer finally dawns on me, I gasp loudly. "But- But- Nobody in town takes tesserae!"

"No, nobody in town _will admit_ to taking tesserae," he corrects me. "You know all those shops depend on the Capitol to send them supplies. Rooba doesn't have anything to sell until the delivery from District 10 comes in. The Cartwrights can't make shoes without leather. Remeed's grocery has no stock without the shipment from Eleven. And without grain from District 9, we can't make bread."

"But tesserae grain's no good for the bread you make," I insist, still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that the pampered merchants I've spent my whole life jealous of might have been taking out as much tesserae as I was.

"You'd be surprised," Peeta says. "It won't do for pastries or the finer breads, we save our Capitol ration for that. But if you take tesserae grain and mill it down some more, and doctor the recipe a bit to cover for it, it does serviceably well in heartier breads."

A horrible thought occurs to me. "Heartier breads?" I ask.

"Yeah, something like rye or one of our seed breads-"

I cut Peeta off mid-sentence. "Or one filled with nuts and raisins?"

Peeta's eyebrows shoot up as he realizes what he's accidentally admitted to. I wonder if he'll open up about it, and if I'm ready to open up about it. I've never really discussed this, we barely mentioned it when we talked in the arena.

He lets out a deep breath and his shoulders visibly sag as he begins speaking. "You remember how bad that winter was." I nod at him; I remember struggling through that winter very clearly. "The Capitol had been shorting our deliveries all winter. I wasn't even twelve yet, but my mother has a cousin who works as some minor functionary in the Justice Building. She snuck us in so my mother wouldn't suffer the humiliation of being known to have taken tesserae, and she fudged our paperwork to make it look like I hadn't signed up until the next week, after my birthday." He pauses, lost in thought for a moment. I don't know what to say, so I just wait for him to resume. "That's why we were there so late that night, any why we were alone in the bakery."

"It was that day?" I ask. "I remember smelling the baking bread when I was walking by, it's what attracted me to look in your trash." I feel the twinge of embarrassment I expect at the memory, but it's not as bad as I'd feared. Peeta already knows everything about that night, there's no sense being embarrassed to talk about it with him.

"Yeah. We – well, I – spent the afternoon milling the tesserae grain, and then we started making loaves to sell in the morning." He takes a deep breath and lets it out. "I think maybe that was what gave me the courage to do it. I mean, I think I would have done it anyway, but the fact that it was _my_ grain in that bread... I never stood up to my mother, not before or since, but that night I didn't hesitate to drop those loaves in the fire."

We're quiet for a moment. "I never thanked you for that."

Peeta shakes his head. "That's not why I did it."

"I know," I say softly. I lean forward, reaching out to take his face in my hands, and pull him into a tender kiss. "Thank you," I say quietly once my lips are free.

Peeta smiles softly at me. "You're welcome." When we sit back, our hands find each other across the back of the couch, as if we just need to be touching somehow.

Something Peeta said before starts to bother me. "What did you mean, that's why you were alone?"

"If anyone else had been down in the bakery, they would have known where the grain came from."

I almost can't believe what Peeta is saying. "Your mother brought you to get tesserae... in secret?"

"Only at first," he says. I don't understand why he's trying to make excuses for that awful woman. "My dad blew up when he found out later that night, but by then it was too late. It's not like we could give it back."

If his father was that mad about it, it couldn't have been something that was expected, no matter how common he tried to make it sound earlier. "Your brothers never took any tesserae, did they?"

Peeta tries to keep his face impassive, but I can see when the pain flashes across it. "No."

"Did you ever take any more?"

Peeta shakes his head. "The only thing my mother cared about was her precious reputation. Dad threatened to tell everyone we were taking tesserae if she ever signed me up again. She tried to argue with him, she said it was the one surefire way to get some value out of me." He chokes out a bitter laugh. I squeeze his hand tighter and begin rubbing his knee with my free hand. "I'm not sure if she really believed he would follow through on his threat, but she never took the chance. But of course Dad easily agreed with her that what was done was done, and there was no reason not to take the remaining eleven allotments for that year."

I sigh as my heart breaks once again for everything Peeta has gone through. "I can't believe your mother did that to you."

Again, Peeta tries to defend her. "It's not the worst thing. I'm sure you took every tesserae you could."

"I did that myself. I chose to do that. I would never have let Prim take any."

"Well, congratulations. You're a better mother than mine," he says bitterly.

The sentence hangs between us for a moment. Somehow I can tell Peeta is thinking the same thing I am, so I go ahead and voice it. "Do you want to have kids one day?"

He doesn't respond at first, his gaze drifting as he seems lost in thought. "I did," he finally says. "Before the reaping. I always wanted children. But now..." He shakes his head again. "I'm not sure I could."

"That's how I've always felt," I say. "I couldn't stand to see my child reaped, or starving, or orphaned by some accident. I just couldn't do it. So I swore I would never have children. It was one of the reasons why I never wanted to fall in love or get married.

"Well, at least we're on the same page, then," he says. He smiles at me, but his eyes are as sad as I've ever seen them. And even though I'm glad we agree, even though I'm relieved that this won't become a point of conflict, even though I've never wanted kids anyway, for some reason a part of me is as sad as Peeta looks.

…..

That night, when I wake up panicked and covered in sweat with a scream already growing in my throat, Peeta is there for me. Once his strong arms and gentle kisses have calmed me, we lay quietly together. I cling to him as if he's the only thing anchoring me to reality, and he holds me as if I'm the most precious thing in the world. I'm still too frazzled to go back to sleep and Peeta won't let himself relax until I do. So we lay awake together.

As the minutes pass, I become acutely aware of how close we are. My head is resting on Peeta's upper arm; his hand is gently stroking my hair, which has come loose from its braid. His other arm is curled around my waist, with his hand rubbing small, soothing circles over my lower back. Both of my legs are wrapped around Peeta's good leg, clutching it as if it were a tree branch I was hanging from. Anyone seeing us like this would make a lot of incorrect assumptions about the state of our physical relationship. As Prim had earlier.

"Peeta, did you mean what you said today?" I ask before I can lose my nerve.

"Probably," he says sleepily. I jerk my head back in surprise, drawing a smile and a light chuckle from Peeta as he pulls my head back to him and drops a kiss in my forehead. "I mean, I said a lot of things today. But I don't remember any that I didn't mean. Do you want to be a bit more specific?"

"When you talked about my, um, what you said about me and, um," I stammer out before he stops me. I actually breathe out a sigh of relief when he interrupts me; he must have figured out what I was referring to more from my embarrassment than from anything I managed to say.

"When I said I thought you looked nice in pants because they show off your body?" he asks with a small smile. I nod to him and fight the urge to hide my face in the crook of his shoulder. I'm not sure why I'm so embarrassed by the subject; truthfully I've never given enough thought to my body to be embarrassed by it. I was only ever worried about what i could do, not how I looked. Was I big enough to use my father's full-size bow instead of the smaller one he made for me when I was a child? Was I strong enough to haul my catches to the Hob? Was I quiet enough to approach my prey without scaring it away? But somehow, trying to talk about this with Peeta, I'm nervous. Nervous about what he thinks. Nervous about what he'll say.

Peeta's smile seems somewhat timid as he answers, but his words are as confident as ever. "Of course I meant it. I wouldn't have said it otherwise."

"You really..." My speech falters; I've never really discussed this kind of thing before, let alone discussed it with a boy I'm lying entwined in bed with. "You really think of me... that way?"

"Well, yeah." The way Peeta says that it's like he doesn't understand how I could be asking the question. "I mean, I don't want to come off like some sort of creep," he says, a touch of nervousness tingeing his voice. "But I am a guy, Katniss. At some point between five and sixteen I started thinking about more than just sneaking you a cupcake and finally getting you to talk to me."

"What did you think about?" I ask. I regret the words almost as soon as they leave my mouth, and this time I really do hide my face against his arm.

Even though I can't see Peeta from my hiding place, I can practically feel his gaze intensify in response to my implication. Thankfully before going into detail, he knows me well enough to ask, "Do you really want me to answer that?"

"No," I say quickly, drawing another chuckle out of Peeta. I roll my head around so I can look up at him once again. "This is just so strange to me. I mean, look at me. I'm not worth thinking about like that."

"Don't say that," Peeta says, a surprisingly harsh tone entering his voice. He looks as surprised by his tone as I am, and he takes a deep breath before he continues. "I hate it when you sell yourself short like that."

I don't sell myself short, do I? My denial must show on my face, because as if he can read my thoughts Peeta says, "You do. You did the same thing in the Capitol when you should have been promoting yourself to Haymitch. You're incredible and you don't see it. I just wish you could love yourself as much as I love you."

I can't help but scoff at his sentiment. "I'd be the most conceited bitch in Twelve if I loved myself as much as you love me."

"Well… Okay, maybe, yeah," he admits with a warm smile that I can't help but return. I just can't control my emotions at all around this boy.

"Call me beautiful if you want," I say, knowing I'll never convince him otherwise. "But I'm not… whatever you were thinking this morning."

"And what was I thinking this morning?" he asks. He's trying to sound light and teasing, but I can hear the seriousness in his voice. When I don't answer, he does it for me. "Was I thinking that you're beautiful?" he asks playfully. "Or was I thinking that you're drop-dead gorgeous?" He nuzzles my nose lightly with his own; I smile involuntarily. "Or was I thinking about how sexy you are?" I feel like I should be uncomfortable with Peeta talking about me this way, given how nervous I was just a minute ago, but somehow I'm not. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.

"Maybe I'm just insufferably proud of myself," Peeta continues.

"Oh? And why is that?" I ask playfully.

"Well, look where we are," he says with a gesture towards our intertwined bodies. "We just met two months ago and we're already sleeping together." I shake my head in disapproval but can't help a small laugh at his insinuation. "I think I'm doing pretty well considering I've never had a girlfriend before."

"Yeah, right," I scoff.

"What do you mean, 'Yeah, right'? You don't think this is going pretty well?"

I shake my head at him again. "Peeta, I know you've had girlfriends."

Peeta looks surprised for just a moment before he smirks at me. "And how exactly do you know that? Have you been paying attention to me after all?"

How exactly _did_ I know that? It's hardly the only thing I know about Peeta, either - I think back to all the things I didn't realize I knew about him until I was practically shouting them at Haymitch. "Maybe..." I slowly admit, causing a wide grin to break out on Peeta's face. "Maybe I was trying to figure out why you kept staring at me!" I try, but it doesn't faze him.

"Well, you're wrong," Peeta says. "I've never had a girlfriend."

I sigh. I really don't know why he keeps insisting on this point, and I'm starting to get a bit upset about it. I don't like him lying to me, even if it's about something this inconsequential. "I know for a fact that you dated Rillis Cooper."

Peeta's mouth hangs open in surprise for just a moment before he responds. "I went out with Rillis Cooper one time, because she begged me to take her to the spring festival."

"Peeta, it's okay," I try to reassure him. "I'm not going to be mad because you dated other girls before we even met."

Peeta huffs out a breath. "Katniss, Rillis Cooper is gay."

I can't help the gasp that escapes my lips. Homosexuality is not unheard of in Twelve, but it's definitely discouraged, and nobody speaks of it openly. The Capitol does its best to discourage homosexuality in the districts, because gay couples don't produce offspring who can spend their childhoods in a reaping ball and then grow up to slave away in a Capitol-controlled industry. Gay couples are not allowed to marry, or to officially share a residence. In the town, where marriages are the contacts by which the wealth and privilege of a family business is passed down, homosexuality is as unacceptable as the Capitol wants it to be. Opinions in the Seam vary - some folks could care less, uninterested in anything that doesn't affect how full their bellies are, while others deal with their frustrations in life by bullying people they know the Peacekeepers will never protect. So Town and Seam, gay people do their best to hide. For Rillis Cooper to trust Peeta with a secret like that really says something.

"Her parents don't know, of course," he continues. "She needed a date to the festival to keep them from suspecting anything, and a fake date to get my mother off my back sounded pretty good to me too."

"I didn't know you two were that close," I say.

"We're not," Peeta says. "The whole thing was fake, Katniss. We weren't really dating."

"That's a heck of a secret to share with someone you're not close to."

"Well…" he begins nervously, "She thought it was safe to tell me."

I can tell from his tone of voice that he's still trying to avoid something. "Why?" I ask.

Peeta lets out a sigh before he answers. "Because she thought I was too," he admits. "She noticed that I never dated girls," he adds pointedly, "and she drew the wrong conclusion."

I consider his answer for a moment. "When we talked in the cave, when you told me about the first day of school, you said you noticed other girls."

"Well, sure," he says. "I noticed lots of other girls. I tried like hell to develop a real interest in one of them, because they didn't intimidate me like you did, and I knew they'd be impressed by silly things like iced cookies with their name on them. But it never worked, because none of them could measure up to you."

For just a moment, I'm floored. I don't know why I keep feeling this way, but every time we talk like this, it's like I realize all over again just how much I really mean to Peeta. Sometimes I feel weird about it; Peeta's always meant something to me, ever since he saved my life with the bread, but it was nothing I could ever put a name to. I certainly didn't spend a lot of time thinking about him. But this situation we're in now, where we're both undressed and we're in bed together and we're so close we seem to be trying to envelop one another, Peeta's been thinking about this for _years_.

Suddenly the need to get this right overwhelms me. I know myself. I know I tend to close myself off. I know I push people away. Sometimes it's to protect myself, and sometimes it's just a reflex. Sometimes I just can't help it. But if I ever do that to Peeta, I'm not sure I could ever forgive myself. I love him and I want to protect him from anyone who might hurt him. Even from myself.

But at the same time, I have to reevaluate some assumptions I've been making about Peeta. I've been assuming that he knew what we were doing, that he was vastly more experienced at all of this than I am and that I've been playing catch-up this whole time. But if he's really never dated before…

"So are you saying you've never…" I begin, but nerves kick in again before I can finish my question.

"I've never…?" Peeta asks after a moment.

"You've never… been with anyone?"

Peeta opens his mouth to answer, but then seems to stop himself as he realizes my real meaning. "You mean, have I had sex with anyone?"

I can't look him in the eyes as I nod my confirmation, and bury my face against his shoulder once again. "I'm sorry. You don't have to answer that."

"Don't be sorry," Peeta says. "If we're doing this – if we're living together, if we're sharing a bed, if you're telling your mother 'not yet' – then you have a right to know. I'll tell you anything you want to know, Katniss."

Part of me feels like Peeta doesn't owe me an answer to this question at all, and I'm embarrassed that I even asked it. But I can't deny that I want to know. I know I want to share everything with him; shouldn't that go both ways? So part of me feels entirely justified in asking. But not enough for me to work up the nerve to look up at him.

"But Katniss," he says, "I've been hung up on you since I was five. When exactly was I going to be with anyone else?"

"I don't know," I mumble against his shoulder. "You spent so many years not even talking to me. You could have found yourself some… distractions." I try to keep my voice even, but if I'm being honest with myself – something I've been trying to do more of lately – even the thought of Peeta being with some other girl, even before we properly met, makes my gut twist in unpleasant ways.

"Hey." Peeta nudges me with his nose. "Come on, look at me." When I don't move he places a soft kiss onto my temple and nudges me again. "Please?"

I'm powerless against the pleading tone in his voice. I come out of my hiding place and look back at Peeta, his face writ with concern but his eyes filled with love. "Katniss, you're it for me. It's always been you."

"But-" I begin to protest, but the rest of my sentence gets swallowed when Peeta presses his lips to mine. Immediately our discussion is forgotten, all my nerves and fears melt away, as I once again lose myself in the delicious feeling of Peeta's lips moving against mine.

Too soon Peeta pulls back. I open my eyes to find him staring intently at me. "Katniss, you're the only girl I've ever been in love with. And one day, when we're both ready to take that step, you'll be the only girl I ever make love with." He punctuates his statement with a gentle kiss on my head. "Only you." And one on my cheek. "Always you." And finally he reclaims my lips.

When we break apart this time, I know I have a big, dumb smile on my face, and Peeta returns it. "Are you okay now?" he asks.

I nod my head. "I guess I don't have to be nervous about how new all of this is for me if you've never been with anyone else either."

Peeta's eyes narrow in question. "You mean you've never…?"

The question is so surprising to me that I don't even remember to be embarrassed about answering it. "Before I met you I was dead set against ever being in a relationship. Who would I have had sex with?"

Peeta's eyes dart away; suddenly he can't meet my gaze. "Well…"

I let out a small sigh when I realize what Peeta's thinking. I bring my hand up to his cheek and turn his gaze back to me. "Gale's never been anything more than a friend to me. You know that."

"Yeah, I know," he says, seemingly embarrassed at his own worries.

I decide his own words may be the best thing for him to hear right now. "Peeta, you're the only boy I've ever been in love with. And one day - one day soon at the rate we're going - you'll be the only boy I ever make love with. It's only you, Peeta."

Like Peeta, I punctuate my words with a kiss. And like me, he looks a lot happier when we separate. "I'm sorry. I guess I'm just not used to… not being jealous of Gale."

"You were really jealous of Gale?" I ask.

"So much," Peeta says with an embarrassed little grin. "I was jealous of him before I even officially met you."

"Were you jealous of the friendship we actually have, or the relationship you thought we had?" I ask.

"Honestly, both," Peeta says. "I won't lie and say I'm not happy to hear that you weren't interrupting your hunting trips to have crazy, Capitol porn style outdoor sex marathons." I bite back a smile and shake my head; even in moments like this Peeta can crack a joke and diffuse the nervous tension. "But even aside from that, he got to spend so much time with you. See you smile. Make you laugh. Even being able to look you in the face was something I could only wish for."

"I used to catch you staring at me," I say.

"Only when I chanced a look at your face," he says. "Usually I would only dare to look at you from behind."

I can't help the smirk that grows on my face. "Is that why you're so obsessed with my ass?"

"And your hair," he answers sheepishly. "I used to spend hours thinking about what it would be like to run my fingers through your hair, or how your ass would feel in my hands."

The moment feels right, and I decide to be bold. "Well, you feel my hair every chance you get, but you haven't grabbed my ass once. What gives?"

…..

When I wake up the next morning, I know exactly where I am, and who I'm with, and the thought immediately relaxes me.

I smile when I remember how the night had gone: My nightmare. Our conversation afterwards; somehow every time Peeta and I talk we always manage to grow even closer together. And finally the first tentative touches that had grown into clumsy groping as we began to learn each other's bodies. We didn't go very far last night, we didn't remove any clothes and we still stayed away from certain areas, but we both know where we're headed. And almost despite myself, the idea doesn't scare me at all.

I open my eyes to see Peeta staring back at me with such intense adoration that it makes me want to shrink into the floorboards, and also to fly and soar through the air like a bird. He's tracing his fingertips over the swell of my hip so lightly that I can't even really feel it through the material of my nightgown, except I can feel where his fingertips are by the jolt of electricity they send coursing through me. If I'd known love could feel this good I would have sought it out much sooner. That or run away from it that much harder. Probably both.

I realize Peeta hasn't blinked in the several minutes since I woke up and started looking at him. Then I realize that neither have I. I quickly look away. "You spend an awful lot of time staring at me, Peeta."

"Well, now that I know you won't punch me for it, I'm taking full advantage," he says teasingly. "Plus, I'm trying as hard as I can to memorize every single detail of this moment."

That's something new. "Why this moment?" I ask.

"This is our first morning waking up together," he says.

"No it's not," I say, a bit confused. "I slept here last night, too."

"Yeah, but that was just a one-time thing. This is the first morning of the rest of our lives, and I always want to remember it."

I don't have a coherent response to that, Peeta's always been better with words than I have. So I do what I usually do when Peeta leaves me completely speechless: I kiss him. I try to put all my emotions and all my love for him into the kiss, because I know my words can never express it. Soon we're back to staring at one another, except now we're smiling and out of breath.

"You might as well get used to this," Peeta says. "So much of our relationship happened in the arena, or at the behest of the Capitol. But these moments here at home, these are ours. And I want to savor them. I want to immerse myself in them. I want to remember every last detail of them for the rest of our lives. I'm going to be acting like this for quite a while."

Those damn words of his. "And how exactly are you acting?" I ask, just to hear more of them.

Peeta's smile grows, like he knows exactly why I asked that. "Like a sentimental fool. Like a lovesick boy. Like someone who's living in a dream and doesn't want to wake up."

"What's your dream?" I ask.

"You're my dream. Always have been. I'm living my dream. Katniss Everdeen, sleeping in my bed. Katniss Everdeen, living in my house. Katniss Everdeen, snuggled comfortably in my arms." The way Peeta says my name, it's like I'm some sort of mystical ethereal superbeing. Is just hearing someone say my name supposed to fill me with such warmth? Now Peeta leans down close so he can kiss and nibble at my ear while whispering playfully, "Katniss Everdeen, letting me feel her body. Katniss Everdeen, sitting in my kitchen telling her mother that she plans on making love with me." It's the first time either of us had said it in so many words, and it makes me blush furiously, but I can't keep the wide smile off my face as Peeta leans back and sighs contentedly. "I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever."

I consider this for a moment. "No, I wouldn't want to do that."

"And why not?" Peeta asks.

"Because we're going to have so many moments together that will be even better," I say, leaning up to kiss him again.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm going to wake up, and I'll still be buried in that riverbed, and this will all have been some fevered fantasy," Peeta says one our lips are free. "Except this is so much better than any fantasy I ever had."

"You know, I was just thinking the same thing earlier," I tell him. Before he can ask for an explanation, we're once again interrupted by someone at the front door, a pounding this time instead of Prim's lighter knocking.

Peeta groans, and moves to get up. "Does this happen every morning at your house?" I ask tiredly, rolling away of him and flopping back down to the bed.

"Only since you started sleeping here," he snarks back at me as he throws some clothes on.

"At least it's not my mother or Prim this time," I offer weakly, still trying to cling to the warmth left where he was lying with me just seconds earlier.

Peeta's already on his way out the door. "From the sound of it, it could be Haymitch. If he ever knocked."

I'm just starting to get out of bed myself when I hear Peeta answer the door.

"Mellark. We need to talk."

"Okay. Come on in, Gale."

…..

_So... That chapter was pretty much fluff piled on top of fluff piled on top of fluff. But I figure there are enough heartbreaking Everlark stories, this one can be sweet and sappy and fluffy for a while longer. How much longer? This may change because some of this isn't written yet, but my best estimate at the moment is that I have another five chapters left that will continue in the vein of these first five, exploring Everlark's new relationship and their new lives, moving Peeta and Katniss into the places I want them to be at the start of Catching Fire. Then the main plot of Catching Fire will enter this story in approximately Chapter 11. _

_Next chapter: What does Gale want? How will Peeta react? What will Katniss do? And what causes one of them to say this: _

_(a line you may recognize from a non-THG franchise)_

_Preview quote from Chapter 6:_

"_I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."_


End file.
